Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine.
Today, we're discussing water to some of you water. Might seem like a boring
topic, but I assure you. That water is anything, but a boring Topic. In fact water, as a substance, is incredibly interesting for a variety of reasons that I'll explain today. In fact, we are going to
Discuss the physics and chemistry of water and I promise to make it accessible to anyone and everyone regardless of whether or not you have a physics or chemistry
background and I will discuss how your body
needs and utilizes water, depending on what
type of water you drink. The
temperature of that water when you drink the water and indeed how you drink that water. Now water is actually a pretty controversial Topic. In fact, in preparing for this episode which took me several months. In
fact, I ran into
Lee contradictory information
and had to go on some real deep Dives in order to ferret out the best and most accurate knowledge for you.
I also found that there are generally two camps of people out there in terms of how they think
about water. And the consumption of
water. One Camp generally speaking is of the mind that
tap water is completely safe.
Perhaps it needs a little bit of filtering but that in most areas of the world, if it runs out of the
tap and unless there's a warning sign directly above the faucet that you can drink the tap water.
The other
Camp seems to be the camp that does not trust anything that comes out of the tap and is excited by an. In
fact, relies on things like reverse
osmosis deuterium depleted, hydrogen
rich, or other forms of water,
that sometimes can be very expensive or at least involve some substantial steps in order to clean filter, alter the chemistry of or in
some other way adjust before they are willing to consume it.
So today what we're going to try and do is to address
All the
stances around water
for instance, we will discuss whether or not tap water is indeed
safe and I will give you some tools that will allow you to address whether or not the water coming out of your TAP is
safe as well as some tools that will allow you to
address, how to clean that water. If indeed, it does need filtering and cleaning in particular for things like fluorides and endocrine disruptors, which
turns out are quite prominent
in a lot, not all. But a lot of tap water sources, I will also talk
about the more quote unquote.
Etheric forms of water that I mentioned a few minutes ago. So I will go systematically through the list of
distilled, a reverse osmosis Spring Water, deteriorate depleted,
water, high pH water. For those of you
that are already screaming out, as you hear
this, oh no. He's going to tell us that pH water can alter the pH of our body and helpful ways. I'm not going to tell you that but I will tell you that the alkalinity or acidity of the water that is the pH of the water that you
drink. Has a profound impact
on your ability to absorb and utilize that water and the
Impact that those water molecules have
on specific biological systems. So turns out pH is very important but not for the reasons that you've probably heard about previously.
I will talk about how the temperature of water that you drink does indeed turn out to be important for the rate of absorption
of that water and its impact on the cells, tissues and organs of your body and thereby your health.
And I will talk about various zero cost and low-cost tools that you can use in order to get
the most out of the water that you drink. And
finally, I will talk about
When and how to hydrate your body. Best, before we dive into today's topic, I want to share with you. Some very interesting results that were just published on the use of
deliberate cold exposure, to benefit fat loss.
Now, deliberate cold, exposure, is a topic I've covered before. In this podcast,
we have an entire episode about that that I've Linked In the show, no
captions deliberate. Cold exposure can be done by way of cold, showers, or
immersion in cold, or ice water up to the neck. That's typically the ways that it's done, it has
been shown to reduce inflammation.
Increase
metabolism. And I think some of the most exciting results that have been published are the results. Certainly in humans showing that deliberate cold, exposure can increase the release of
so-called catecholamines, which are dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. And those increases in those three molecules are quite long lasting and lead to substantial increases in mood and focus throughout the day. Now
many people out there hear about deliberate
cold exposure and cringe other people hear about it and cringe because they've heard,
Heard that deliberate cold exposure, especially by way of immersion in water can block the adaptation to strength or hypertrophy training, what I mean by that is yes, indeed there are data showing that if one gets into very cold, water up to the neck in the six hours, any time that is in the six hours after strength, or hypertrophy training that some of the
strength and hypertrophy
increases, that one would observe are blocked by that deliberate cold exposure. However, after 6 hours does not seem to be a problem so you can be done on
Other days besides the strength and hypertrophy training, it can be done before strength and hypertrophy training, it can be done after
endurance work and I should mention that, it does not appear,
that cold showers disrupt, the adaptations to strength, and hypertrophy training. Even if they are done immediately after strength or hypertrophy training, okay?
With that said, many people do
enjoy the effects of deliberate cold exposure in
particular for those increases in
mood and alertness that are the consequence of those increases in the catecholamines, dopamine norepinephrine and epinephrine.
And again, those increases are very long lasting, so it's not just during the exposure to cold. It is for several hours up to four, maybe even five or six hours, depending on how cold and how long, the deliberate cold, exposure happens to be. Again, there's a lot to say and explore about deliberate cold exposure. So again, I'll just refer you to the episode on deliberate cold exposure. If you want to explore the mechanisms and the positive Health outcomes, some of the controversies within the data, Etc, within that
episode. Meanwhile, I definitely want to share with you the results of this.
Study that just
came out. The title of this study is impact of cold exposure on life satisfaction and physical composition of
soldiers. The
reason this study is very interesting is that it's one of the few studies that used, I should say, explored, both deliberate, cold exposure by immersion in cold water, as well as deliver it cold exposure by
way of cold, showers as it relates to weight loss. Now, there's already data out there on the effects of deliberate cold exposure and metabolism. And
here, I'm mainly referring to the
beautiful work of doctor Susanna so Berg and colleagues in. Scandinavia that showed that people that do 11 minutes total of deliberate cold
exposure by immersion and cold water up to the neck
per week. So 11 minutes per week, total spread
out across some different sessions by way of getting into water.
That's uncomfortably cold up to the neck and then getting out and then doing
that several times per week to hit that 11 minutes or more threshold. And this is
very important will come up in a moment in the context of this new study and warming up. Now,
Not by getting into a warm shower, which is frankly what I do. After my cold showers for getting into the ice bath or Coldwater immersion, but rather
forcing their body to warm up,
Naturally, by using its own metabolic abilities.
And those studies, they observed substantial increases in
brown fat stores, which are fat stores that you really want around the heart and clavicles increases the metabolism that were quite dramatic, in
my opinion. And that
could be very beneficial for
Allowing people to feel more comfortable at cold temperatures when they're not in cold water and on and on so
lots of benefits shown in that study. In this
study, what I thought was particularly
interesting is again they explored both immersion in cold water and cold
showers and the
duration of cold exposure that they found led to
substantial fat loss. Especially around the abdomen was very brief, deliberate cold exposure.
Let me give you a few details about this. Study, the study involved, 49 subjects.
That include both males and females. This is
also really important that
beautiful work of Susanna. So Berg and
colleagues, as far as I know, only looked at
males, this study looked at males and females, they were 19 to 30 years old, and they're basically were two groups. People are either were assigned to get deliberate cold
exposure, or they were not assigned to deliberate cold exposure, the form of deliberate cold exposure involved,
one session per week of cold immersion in cold water, up to the neck and
To just give you a sense of how cold it was. It was three degrees Celsius, which translates to about 37 and
a half degrees Fahrenheit. That's
pretty darn cold, but it was only for two minutes. Okay. So one session at 3 degrees Celsius otherwise known as 37.4
degrees
Fahrenheit for two minutes every
week once a
week in addition the same subjects did five
cold showers per week or a minimum of five cold showers per week and
Was called showers were slightly warmer than
the immersion in cold water condition.
So they were 10 degrees
Celsius approximately or 50 degrees Fahrenheit, still pretty
cold and the duration of
that cold water exposure in the shower was just for 30 seconds.
Okay? So this is interesting to me because many people don't have access to
Coldwater immersion. They might not have an ice bath or any place I can do that, but they most people do have access to a cold shower of some sort.
Us. I think most people could do, I believe one ice
bath per week or find a place where they could get into cold water safely.
Now, I should point out that some people will not do well
going into 37.5 °F AK, 3 degrees Celsius, water having never done anything like this before. So if you're going to try and employ these
sorts of protocols that were used in the study, I do recommend that you ease
into it over the course of a week or so and become somewhat adapted to the shock of cold water exposure. So maybe start it, you know, 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
I can ease your way back in terms of the Coldwater immersion. Especially
now another critical feature of this study is as
with the beautiful work by Susanna.
So Berg the subjects were told to warm up naturally
after the deliberate cold exposure. So, they basically hung out outside of the Coldwater immersion or outside of the cold shower for 10 minutes after they were exposed to the cold in their bathing suit. Or I'm assuming they were wearing something, but the point is that
That you are not going from deliberate cold
exposure directly into a hot shower, or a saint or something of that sort. So,
again, their bodies were forced
to heat up again, naturally, after the deliberate cold exposure, but after the 10-minute period, they were able to do whatever they wanted. Essentially re clothes take a warm shower and so on and go about their day. Now, the results of this deliberate cold exposure protocol
again two minutes in
cold immersion at 3 degrees Celsius. Thirty seven point five degrees Fahrenheit.
Five cold showers per week of two minutes, long little bit warmer, 10 °C, 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Now the deliberate cold exposure
used in this study cause many different statistically significant positive changes. They had a very extensive questionnaire that related to mood everything
from levels of
anxiety to sexual satisfaction and on and on, in fact, they saw a statistically significant Improvement
in sexual satisfaction in the subjects that were exposed to deliberate cold exposure, not in the control.
Whole group.
Although they didn't look at this, chances are those improvements in sexual satisfaction were the downstream consequence of the known
increases in testosterone, and free testosterone that occur in both men and women who do the sorts of deliberate cold. Exposure, again, testosterone being important hormone for libido, in both men and women.
They also saw
Improvement in regulation of anxiety, which I think is very interesting given that the deliberate cold exposure often causes people
anxiety. But
Here and in other studies, we've seen it can lead to
and a better ability to buffer against anxiety in the normal happenings of everyday life.
Perhaps the most interesting and significant results they found in the study. However, were that in particular in men there was a reduction in Waist circumference following eight weeks of this deliberate cold exposure, as well as a five point. Five percent
on average. Five point five percent reduction in abdominal fat that was quite statistically.
If account when compared to the other groups. Now
why there was no observed
reduction in abdominal
fat or waist circumference in the female subjects isn't clear could
have to do with just the way that body fat is stored in metabolized in females versus males. That is going to be a topic for future exploration.
So I do think the study is very interesting because when you look at the landscape of Science and discussion around deliberate cold exposure, I think there's a general
consensus now that deliberate cold exposure can change one sense of
And well-being through the increases in catecholamines that I mentioned earlier, but
the impact on metabolism itself has been
somewhat controversial. Because the overall changes in metabolism that are observed, while statistically significant in many Studies, have
not ever, really been shown to translate into weight loss
or body fat loss in any kind of specific way. And of course, a great advantage of this study is that by exploring soldiers.
They were able to really hold constant a number of other features like the amount of daily activity that those
soldiers are exposed to their diet,
their living conditions, and so on and so forth. So at least insofar as human studies are done. It's a very well controlled study will provide a link to the studying the show note captions. And for those of you that are thinking about employing the protocol that's used in this particular paper or combining it with existing deliberate cold exposure, protocols to me, it seems pretty straightforward and of
pretty minimal time investment. Just two minutes.
It's of deliberate cold exposure, by way of water
immersion up to the neck, and five times, a week of 30 seconds,
each of deliberate cold exposure by way of cold shower, and just a quick mention about cold showers,
if you're going to use cold showers to do, deliberate, cold exposure, you're going to want to stand under the shower itself,
right? And essentially have it, hit your head, the back of your neck, and your upper back, which is where most of your brown fat stores. Are
concentrated it turns out that cold exposure to those regions of the body in
particular?
Are going to trigger the adaptation of increased Brown fat stores which involves increases in mitochondria in those fat. Again this is not the blubbery fat beneath the skin. This is the fat that acts as kind of an oil in the furnace, that is your thermogenic properties of your body to generate heat and burn off so-called white adipose tissue elsewhere in the body.
Now anyone that
understands the laws of physics and thermodynamics will be saying wait in order to get fat loss. You need to have a caloric deficit, calories in calories out still applies. And yes, that's
Absolutely true. We can only conclude
on the basis of the results of this study that the people that lost body fat were indeed in a caloric
deficit, presumably
because all other factors were held more or less constant in this group of soldiers, presumably
because the deliberate cold, exposure itself, elevated metabolism, thereby,
increasing the calories out component of the calories, in calories out equation, which of course governs, the rules of weight loss, and body fat loss as well.
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/ huberman. Let's talk about water and let's start off by answering the question. What is water water is, of course, H2O most everybody knows that from an early
age. But what H2O means, is that each
molecule of water, consists of two hydrogen's and one oxygen. Now, the
physical arrangement of those two hydrogen's, and one oxygen turns out to be really important for how water
functions in the body and frankly elsewhere in our world and life,
if you were
To make a peace symbol
that is to put
up your index finger and your middle
finger simultaneously fact, I'm going to recommend you do that now unless you're using your hands for something else important, which case do it later
if you make that peace symbol and you look at your hand, you have a pretty good impression of what an
individual water, molecule consists of, which is h two o, two
hydrogen's and an oxygen. And
with that peace symbol, the fingers there are the tips of your fingers rather are going to represent hydrogen's
Your fingers that is the length of each of those fingers is going to represent the electron bonds to
the oxygen and the
palm of your hand and the fingers that are down are going to represent the oxygen. Okay? Now, what's important about that visual impression or visual
image of the individual water? Molecule
is that it is polarized, that is the hydrogen's over on one side, both of them are over on one side and the
oxygen is over on another.
And what's really important about
water molecules being polarized
is that they
A can bind to one
another by way of that
polarization, and this has to do with something that we all kind of learned in chemistry at one point. But many of us forgot. We don't even understand it the first time around which is that positives and negatives attract. So when you have individual water molecules they have the opportunity to interact and essentially bind to one another and they bind through what are called, covalent bonds, covalent bonds are relatively weak bonds and so as a consequence water can change its composition.
Relation, however, covalent bonds are strong enough,
that water actually can maintain some
structure and that structure will vary of course, depending on its temperature.
So what you
need to know about water is that indeed, it consists of lots of
individual h2o's and those 80s can arrange
themselves in different ways and that temperature is a strong determinant of the arrangement of those water molecules that is their bonding to one another. And in fact even their spacing between those bonds.
So again, even if you don't have any chemistry, stay with me because you'll definitely understand this water can exist in at least, three forms and maybe four
forms. We know that it can be liquid. Of course, it's really normally what we think of. When we think of water, it can be gas. So we think of steam, right? So if you heat it up, it takes on a,
not a semi solid or a semi liquid form, it takes on this
property of steam or
gas. Okay, so what do you see Steam or when you
Breathe on a cold day through your mouth, or through your nose. And you see your are, those are water molecules that are condensing. That is bonding in certain ways. Based on differences, in temperature between the inside of your body and the outside air. And of course, it can be a solid. It can be ice. Now, ice is fascinating and important in understanding how Water Works and this will become relevant later when we think about how Water Works within the body as well, especially how different temperatures of water impact, the health and behavior of our cells and
The most important point to understand about water in its
solid state. Is
that unlike most substances when water is in its solid state, it is actually less
dense than when it's in its liquid state. So, just think about that,
most
substances, most metals, for instance, when they are in a solid
state, they are more dense than when they are in a liquid state. So for instance, if they're in a solid state, they will sink in a container filled with their liquid
form.
Not water.
Water is very interesting, because as you
cool water and water transitions from a liquid to a solid, it still binds. That is it can form bonds between those different molecules of
water, but the spacing between those H2O. So again,
those peace symbols with hands, if you had a bunch of those, if you had, you know, thousand
hands all Making Peace symbols, they can bond to one another. But when it's cold,
those bonds are actually made
further apart from
Another and as a consequence ice as we all know floats in water. In other words, put very simply water is
unusual and special
in that in its solid form. Ice, it is actually less dense than when it's in its liquid form and that's why ice floats in water. Now
this is important not just to our our biology but to all of
life because if you think about it if it were not the case that water is less dense in its solid form ice than it is in its liquid form.
Form
the bottoms of our oceans would be covered with thick sheets of ice
and if that were the case, you can be absolutely sure that
life would not exist on our planet. The way that it does and there's a good chance that we would not
exist as a species because so much of what allows us to exist on this planet and the other animals to exist on this planet relies on photosynthesis Pathways in
plants that are dependent on the sun and interactions with the oceans and lakes and other
Bodies of water. And of course,
the ice caps are vitally
important. That is the presence of ice especially at the polls, but elsewhere in bodies of water as well. So, icebergs are critical part of the ecosystem that allows for everything from photosynthesis
to the ability of certain animals to extract food from each other and from their local resources. Now there's a whole discussion to be had there. But the important point for now is that the physical properties of the bonds between water that are made and change depending on
Temperature, turn out to be
essential for us to be present on this planet at all,
and for our cells to function in the ways that they do for sake
of health
and for sake of disease and we'll explore this later. When we talk about the critical relationship between temperature pH which
is the relationship between alkalinity, how basic or acidity, how acid a given liquid. Or in this case, we're going to talk about water
is and the ways that our cells can or can't.
Use water. So I realize that this is a
fairly in-depth. For those of you that don't have much of a background in chemistry. I've tried to keep it really top Contour, but if you can make a peace symbol or if you can just imagine a peace symbol in your mind and realize that that's a water molecule and that those water molecules can bind to one another through bonds that are relatively strong but weak enough that they can be broken if they need to. And that the temperature
that those water molecules are
exposed to changes the distance between those bonds
and that's
What allows ice to float in water? Then you are going to have no problem with the remainder of the discussion
today. In fact, you will also have the ability
to understand things that you've observed many times over but perhaps have never thought about or really understood which are for instance that water has a certain level
of surface. Tension for instance if you've ever been to the
ocean and the waves are coming in, what you'll notice is if you walk on the dry sand or gravel Pebbles, that is of the ocean. It's very easy, right? I mean that
Able to move down or the sand moves down. It depresses a little bit due to the weight of your body but as you get
closer to the water, you're going to sink deeper
because that's and is more saturated with water.
But at some point you
won't be able to actually walk on top of the water, right? It has been said that Jesus walked on water. There's the so-called Jesus
Christ lizard so named because it
can actually walk on the surface of water. A leaf can float on the surface of water.
Under some conditions, a coin can
float on the surface of water. If you make
coffee
in the morning, you can actually take a spoonful of that hot coffee
and pour a little bit on the surface of your coffin. You'll notice that it will be dup and you'll get little
round spheres of water. Those are little water molecules bound to one another that spin on top of the surface before they sink under that has everything to do with the
bonding between water that's dependent on temperature. But
also, as with
the difficulty for essentially, everybody to walk on water, or for animals, to walk on
water, the surface tension
of water.
Allows certain things to float their or to
stay at the surface but there's a very thin layer of water molecules at the
surface of water that are more
dense than
the water that resides at deeper depths and that's why most things including us sink in water. We are more dense than water.
Now I did mention earlier that there are three forms
of water. There's the ones that we all are familiar with the solid liquid and gas forms water. However, there are data mainly from Gerald Pollux Laboratory,
At the University of
Washington that have
described, the so-called fourth phase of water, which is structured water. And we'll get into this a little bit later, because structured water has really been a prominent Topic in the, let's call it the water Health afficionados, it's a heavily debated topic as to whether or not structured water is somehow better for ourselves. If it exists within our bodies will get into that in full detail later.
But the whole notion of structured water is that in the presence of certain solids or certain liquids, the confirmation
of water.
Is the water molecules actually change somewhat. This has been demonstrated whether or not it has
relevance to the biological function of our
body is a different issue. But we know that there is this
fourth phase of water called structured water.
Structured water is a fairly complicated topic but we can make it very simple for sake. Of today's discussion. I mentioned earlier that opposite poles
attract that is positives and negatives attract and typically things that are negatively charged when presented with another negative charge either repeal or don't attract things that
Are positively charged in the presence of another positive charge. Also tend to repel, this is the basis of magnets either
sticking to one, another or repelling from one
another. There's also the idea that human beings were Opposites Attract, but that's a different episode that we need to do in the future.
The point here, is that structured water is a unique condition in which the local environment that these water molecules happen to be, in allows positive, charges between different water molecules to attract one another.
So again, whereas normally its positive and negatives that attract in the configuration that we
call structured water
positives and positives attract and form bonds that are stronger
than the typical bonds that would be formed between water molecules
and just as it kind of Prelude to
our discussion about structured water as it may or may not relate to health
later. There are a number of
people that believe that within the body because of the presence of certain liquids and solids
That the water within our cells
and in particular within the interactions with so-called organelles organelles are things like mitochondria
the Golgi apparatus they have fancy
names. These are the these are the things within cells. That allow
cells to do everything from make proteins to traffic proteins out to the surface of cells things like neurotransmitters and receptors and
so on a lot of people who are interested in
structured water as it relates to biological function have hypothesized or like to debate rather, whether or
not in the body, water
is not just present in its liquid form.
Or gaseous form. We know it's not present in its solid form unless you gulp down some ice, cubes for instance.
But there is a cohort of people out there including some fairly accomplished scientists that believe that within the body, the organelles of our cells act as a substrate for water to exist. In this
fourth form, this structured water form and that's led to this whole Niche. Industry of people who are
proponents of consuming so
called structured water and
Again, we'll get to that a little bit later. So, now, you know what
individual water molecules consist of when you hear
H2O, hopefully, you'll get that visual image in your mind of an individual water, molecule being the peace symbol and a bunch of
those binding to one
another through these relatively weak
bonds, but strong enough, that certain things can take place, like surface tension.
Keep in
mind that surface tension of water, May relate to either
standard bonds, between water, or this fourth phase.
That's heavily debated still, but we certainly know that.
For instance, if you were to take a piece of wax paper,
Or glass and you were to pour some water
on it. You would notice that the water would beat up or kind of aggregate it particular locations. When you see that beading up or the aggregation of water molecules on a particular surface, you're seeing two things. This is actually kind of fun. The next time you see it, you'll know that the aggregation, the beading
up of water with itself. So
individual water molecules are many water molecules and
aggregating at one location and making a bead of water
that's due to these
bonds. These covalent bonds occurring between
Other molecules. But
also you'll notice that on a vertical pane of glass say in rain or on your windshield that the water will look almost like it's sticking to the glass and that's because they're actually bonds between the water molecules that have beat it up themselves and the glass so water can not just bind to itself. It can also bind to certain surfaces and the fact that perhaps,
if you drive your car,
if you were to tap the window, or if a big enough, bead of water formed on a
window that it would start to drip down,
That's because those bonds with the surface are strong, but they're not so strong
that it stick at that location,
quite different
than water that is in its solid form ice that can actually really adhere if you've ever had a scrape ice off a windshield. So for you, as you live in cold regions, you're familiar with this, have to scrape ice off the windshield. You realize that the bonds between water and its solid form and different Services is quite a bit stronger than the bonds between different water molecules with each other or the bonds between water.
And different surfaces when they are warmer.
Okay, so I do realize that for a lot of people listening that's going to be a pretty deep dive into the chemistry and physical properties of water. But all you really need to know is that these water molecules are incredibly
versatile and can bind to each other and can bind to different
surfaces and can allow things to float or to sink or even to move across surfaces of water. Based on the three, perhaps, four
different states that water can be in
and that versatility That You observe.
The natural world on window panes and rain
and clouds and hail and ice and snow and scraping ice off your windshield, in the cold of winter and perspiration. And so on, all of that is finding good. But realize that almost all of those same sorts of
properties of water
become extremely relevant. When thinking about how your body actually,
utilizes water. And the key thing here is that
temperature and the so-called alkalinity or acidity, that is the pH of water. Turn out to be very important.
Important determinants
of how water is used by the cells of your body. In fact is all
described in a moment. We have entire sets of biological mechanisms solely devoted to trying to get water into our cells. In very specific ways, including at specific rates and to use water in different ways because as you've
probably heard before, we are
mostly water. What's kind of interesting to me. And what I found researching this episode is that the percentages of our cells and bodies that are purported to be
water.
Is a pretty broad range. Some people say we're
55% water other people's, they were 70% water, some people say, we're 95% water the exact percentage doesn't matter so much. And really just boils down to whether or not the person that stating that percentage is talking about how
much water is present in our
cells and body at a given moment versus how much water was involved in the process of creating the sorts of proteins and other things of our body
that are required to have hair cells, skin cells, brain cells, Etc. So
if
You really want a number out there. I can't give you a single number. If you want to
be accurate it's going to have to be arranged. And basically we are anywhere from
70% to 90% water depending on how you define
being water that is whether or not you're
talking about water being present in cells, in its liquid form, or maybe in
this fourth structure water form. If you're of the mind that that exists
within us and whether or not you're talking about water, that was used to create a given protein like I've receptor
or transmitter or whether or not
Talking about the water just being water as
H2O, okay? So again it's very easy to go down that rabbit hole
and this is part of the reason why there's such a wide discrepancy of assertions as to how much of us as water, but let's be direct. Most of our body is water and there isn't a
single other molecule in the universe
that we can look to. And say that it has as important, a role in our health and biology and frankly our presence of life on Earth at all then water, I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge.
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Okay, so now at a minimum, everyone out, there should
understand that water has a particular structure. So when you hear H2O, you can kind of imagine that
structure and that the water molecules can change their confirmation. That is they can bind to other water molecules and it turns out they can bind to other things and
She changed the confirmation of other things. A good example of that,
something we're all familiar with which is Waters ability to dissolve certain substances like sugar or salt
and that is because
salt molecules are sugar molecules are what we call hydrophilic. They like water.
And when we say they like water, it just means that the chemical structure of
salt sodium or the chemical structure of say
sucrose like table. Sugar
can actually interact.
Act with the hydrogen's and oxygens of water and can change those salt molecules or sugar molecules turning them from solid into liquid. Essentially, creating what are called solutes, which is basically the the dissolving of solid into a liquid solutions. In fact water is one of the best solvents on the planet. In fact water is better at dissolving. Many solid than is acid.
That's how incredible water is and there a number of reasons related to the chemistry of water that can explain that. But
as we transition from talking about the physics and
chemistry of water to how water actually behaves with in our body and contributes to our health
or to disease. Depending on the case, it's important to understand that
molecules such as sugar and salt, can be
hydrophilic or as we know
oil and water
don't mix, that's because oils lipids
are so-called hydrogen.
A phobic. What's hydrophobic will just think phobic
certain molecules such as lipids, don't
dissolve, well, in water and we all intuitively understand that if you take some olive oil, for instance, and you put it into a little glass of water will likely float, or beat up or form little spherical or
amoeba-like shapes within the water and that's because oil
lipids are hydrophobic.
So different substances out.
There are either going to be more
hydrophilic. That is they are going to have a greater propensity.
City to interact with water and bind with the different aspects of the water molecules or
hydrophobic to have less of a propensity to interact with and bind with water molecules.
And so we've been alluding to this numerous times throughout this podcast, already the temperature of water and the pH that is the alkalinity or acidity of water, will have a strong impact on whether or not a hydrophilic or hydrophobic substance will have a
greater or lesser tendency to
interact with water.
You all know this intuitively as well. If you've ever tried to
dissolve say, a
big tablespoon of sugar in very cold water, you'll notice that the grains don't dissolve as quickly as when you take that big tablespoon of sugar and
put it into a warm or hot cup of water. And that's because the temperature of water actually changes. How well that Sugar molecule is able to change its conformation and interact with
The water molecules, likewise if you want to get something
that's really
hydrophilic into an aqueous, that is water containing
solution. The temperature is also going to
strongly impact. That now,
there are a near infinite number of examples of how
temperature and pH impact,
the tendency of hydrophilic. And
hydrophobic substances to dissolve in water or not.
We're not going to go into all those details. But as we migrate from our discussion about the physics and chemistry of water into
how,
Sir behaves within our body which is what we're going to do
now. And then as we continue into the third part of our discussion which is why and how certain types of water
that some of you are familiar with like different pH, water distilled, water reverse
osmosis water, why those different types of water are thought to. And in some cases do in fact, change
the ways that our cells function for Better, or For Worse,
all of that will come together and make sense for you. Okay. So all the cells of your body every cell, even your
bones, that is the
Osteoblasts and the other cells within your bones, your bone marrow, your red blood cells, your white blood cells, your neurons or nerve cells liver cells or kidney cells. All of them require
water.
In order to get the proper
amount of water into those cells, they're basically two ways that water can access those cells.
If we zoom out for a second and ask ourselves, how does water
actually get into the body most of us just think, oh, we drink that water into our body. Of course, that's the main way.
We can also, breathe water
molecules in our body through humid air.
When you hydrate your cells, that is when you're bringing water into your cells, that water needs to move from your gut and into the bloodstream and
Really into the individual cells, whatever
cell type that may be and they're basically two ways that water can access those cells.
The first way is been known about, for a very long
time and that is so called
diffusion. Now, the outside of most cells is made up
of fatty stuff lipid. So, for instance, neurons nerve
cells have a lipid bilayer. It's two layers of fat and you already know that fat lipid is very hydrophobic. Okay. Now that turns out to be
Not a problem, but a solution for how water can get across that lipid barrier. Why
it is the fact that water can change its conformation and lipids can change their confirmation just enough so that the bonds between water and the bonds between those hydrophobic lipids can interact, allowing the water molecule to basically pass through the lipid because it can Bond very weakly or in some cases, not at all, but very weakly to those lipids and then be pushed through to the other side, really?
Incredible. If you think about it, if there was too much of a hydrophobic relationship between the lipid and the
water, the water
would come up to the surface of that of that fatty outside of ourselves and then would be repelled away from it. Or we just stay there right at the surface. And
that would be no good because we actually need that water to diffuse across the cell membranes were actually it's a double cell membrane as I mentioned before two layers so
water and lipids of cells can interact with just enough Affinity that the water molecules can diffuse
across those cell membrane.
Areas. But this is an important but
the diffusion of water molecules across those lipid barriers on the outsides of cells is a fairly slow process compared to the
other way that water accesses cells. And there's other way that water accesses cells
is really something that was just discovered about 10 years ago. So this is a fairly recent discovery, but turns out to be a fundamental discovery which is the
presence of what are called aquaporin channels.
Aquaporin channels are basically
Portals through the membrane
that allow water
molecules to move very quickly
across cell. Membranes
at a rate of about 1 million H2O is 1 million water molecules per second. And the way that water molecules move across the cell membrane through those aquaporin. Channels is very interesting, the inside of those channels in the way to think of these as they're literally tubes. Stuck through the membranes of cells. The insides of those channels are very hydrophobic
Allowing those water molecules to just jot really quickly. And almost as if in your mind you can just imagine as if it was or lubricated for the water low. It's not really lubricated the, the water molecules can move through in single file for
a million per second. Now,
why would you need
two ways for water to get across cell? Membranes one fairly slow through
basic diffusion. And again, diffusion folks is the movement of things from a gradient of higher concentration to lower concentration.
Which is think about this as things tend to run
downhill from higher concentration to lower
concentration. They try and create equilibrium across space. So you know, if
you had a bunch of marbles on one side of a
box there, just imagine that these were water molecules because of the charges between those hydrogen's and oxygens. There's a tendency for those
marbles to spread out and essentially take on a fairly even
confirmation. That's basically just diffusion across a space
water. Molecules will also move from
Concentration to lower concentration across
cell membranes. And then you have these portals, these tubes or these channels as they're called, these
aquaporin channels, were water
molecules can move very quickly. Now, the reason why biology seems to have created these aquaporin channels, and again, I wasn't consulted, the design phase. But the most logical explanation is that we have many tissues
within our body that often need
water very quickly or need to
release water very quickly. Let's think
Think about a couple of these and then, let's look at what the actual distribution of aquaporin channels is throughout the body.
What is an area of your body that on occasion will need to move water? Very quickly out of it can use your imagination here, but I'll just tell you that, for instance, your tear glands or tear ducts need to release tears very quickly. So you need to take water that stored in your body, if there's an emotional experience, or if you look at a very bright light, for
instance,
Or God forbid. If you get some
sort of irritant in your eye, you're going to start to tear up. And those tears are the release of fluid from those tear ducts. And so it's going to be the very Rapid Release of water from those tear ducts through so-called aquaporin channels. And in fact aquaporin channels are heavily. Expressed, their many of them in the cells of the so-called lacrimal. Glands that release Tears In addition,
We need to absorb water from the gut and the gut has a lining and
athelia lining. And other cell line is mucosal lining and water. Needs often to move very quickly from our stomach into the rest of the body and
one way that is
accomplished is through aquaporin
channels that are expressed all along your gut. So the
discovery of these aquaporin channels is really highly significant in terms of understanding the different ways that water can interact with and get into the cells.
Of your
body. Now, there are aquaporin channels not just in the lacrimal glands that allow for
tearing or within the gut, but in many tissues within your body and they're you even have different distributions within those tissues. In fact, as one looks at the expression of the different aquaporin channels because it turns out they're different forms of them across all the cells and tissues of the body, there's really no single tissue within the body except perhaps the bones of your body and perhaps the ligaments to some extent that don't have these.
And
channels. Some of you out there may have heard of the so-called faccia faccia and sheath muscles, who Unique, Kind of connective tissue,
that gives some
pliability and yet some rigidity that allow for a lot of the physical abilities of your musculoskeletal system. It's incredible tissue will do an
entire episode about fashion at some point. Fascinating fascinating
tissue faccia, even contain
aquaporin channels. So
the role of aquaporin channels in faccia, di probably relates to our specific needs to be able to
Use specific muscle groups in particular ways at particular times. In other words, if you're sleeping or lying down or sitting, you're not using your musculoskeletal system as much as if you're running or performing some repetitive Behavior turns out that the aquaporin channels in certain tissues, like the fascia can be used when we transition from low Mobility states to high Mobility states allowing more perfusion or access of water into particular cells of the body when
we need it. So just fascinating fascinating channels, these aquaporin
channels again when we discuss
Early recently. So we're still learning new
things about our biology all the time. Now, in a
very important feature of the aquaporin channel is that the movement of water molecules across the cell membrane through those aquaporin channels is strongly dependent on the temperature of water, and the pH of water. This becomes, especially important, our description and our Deep dive into so-called
alkaline water, or higher
pH water a little bit later, but I'll just give you a little teaser.
For
now because I'm sure that a number of people are wondering about this.
If you go into the store or even a convenience store, you will see pH water. Now, every water has a pH, right? Lower numbers mean more acidic higher
numbers. Mean more alkaline or more basic, you'll
see pH water. That is 7.4, you'll see 7.8, you'll see 9.8. You'll see a huge range of these things and there are many many different claims about how the pH of water is important for
regulating the pH of the body.
Here's the real story, the pH of your body that is the pH of the cells at different locations in your body is strongly strongly
homeostatic. Lee regulated. What do I
mean by that? It means it doesn't change that
much which means that
you have very specific biological mechanisms. That ensure the pH is maintained
for instance in
the skin cells of your skin in the
retinal cells of your eye in your brain.
In cells. Now it is true that across the body different cells and tissues have fairly widely varying pH. It has been said that the pH of bodily tissues is generally between 7.2 and 7.4,
however, if you were to look at the pH of your gut and keep in mind that your gut is not just your stomach, your gut is the entire pathway ranging from your throat all the way down to where you excrete things out of
Your body that entire pathway, has different pH levels, depending on where you are along the gut and intestinal pathway. And in fact having much lower that is more acidic pH at certain locations along your gut pathway is what allows those gut microbiota. Those little microorganisms of which you have trillions that are important for regulating everything from neurotransmitter production to hormone production that allow them to flourish and do well.
That said except under conditions of
hemorrhage or changes in
blood volume that are of a dangerous level that
can lead to seizure, or even death the
pH of the rest of the cells of your body. And also those gut cells doesn't
change that much on a moment to moment basis.
So if somebody tells you that you should
drink, alkaline water, or alkalized water, as it's sometimes called
in order to keep
your body more alkaline.
And less
acidic. There is essentially no
basis for that at a macroscopic level or even at a local level. Now what that does not
mean is that the pH of the water that
you drink is not important. In
fact, if the pH of the water that you drink is too low, that is if the water that you consume is too acidic, it will not move as quickly from your gut into
the other regions of your body. And
For the other cells of your body that require that water will not be able to access it as readily
you've probably experienced this if you've consumed certain water and it feels like it's sloshing around in your stomach or it feels like it's just somehow staying there or you feel it, it's presence more, not just as volume but it's almost as if you can feel the little
waves of water along the inside of your gut. Now sometimes that can relate to
temperature but oftentimes that can
relate to the pH of that water.
And it turns out it is true that water that
It is more alkaline, that is pH is of 7.4 or higher. Can move more
readily across the aquaporin
channel and in terms of absorption of water from the endothelial lining and the
other cell type lining of your gut into the rest of your body. It is true that higher pH water provided that pH isn't too. High
is going to be absorbed more quickly which partially explains why some people have an affinity for this higher pH water. Now, this is not to say that.
Need to consume high pH water in order to hydrate your body. Properly, I want to be very clear about that. However, if you are
interested in what the value of elevated pH water is, it largely has to do with this accelerated absorption. And as we'll talk about a little bit later, there is also growing evidence that it can adjust the function of certain cells that are within your immune system
and thereby reduce certain inflammatory responses. So I
realize as I'm saying this, some people out there
There are probably thinking oh no this guy's like a
pH. Water proponent. He's saying we have to drink alkaline water or by very fancy water. Now I want to be clear. That is not what I'm saying and I'm also not saying that you need to purchase very expensive water in order to derive the maximum benefits from the water that you drink. It turns out there are a few things that you can do by way
of temperature and by way of filtering water and a few other tricks that I'll tell you a little bit later, that will allow you to increase the absorption rate of water in the gut, which turns out to be a very
Interesting, but also potentially important thing to do for not just reducing inflammation, but also making sure that you're getting proper
hydration of different cell types in your body, including Rapid hydration of your brain cells which as we also talked about in a few moments can greatly enhance cognitive function. Okay, so we've talked
about how water can get into cells. There are two ways to fusion and movement through these aquaporin channels. We've earmarked the discussion
that the temperature and the pH of water, that is the confirmation of water. And here, I
I
really want to embed this in people's minds that when we talk about temperature of water and pH of water, we're really talking about the arrangement of those H2O as those
water molecules. So keep that in mind, we've covered. How water can get into cells through those two different ways diffusion and through their aquaporin
channels, what we haven't talked about is
what happens to water once it's in cells
and this is very simple to explain. Once water is inside of cells. It's going to be incorporated into the different proteins and organelles again or
Those are things like mitochondria, the nucleus of the cells which is contains the
DNA and so forth in different ways depending on which proteins are there and how hydrophilic or hydrophobic those proteins
are or in some case
art, that's an entire landscape of protein to
water specific
interactions. None of which we need to go into in any
specific detail now.
But the one thing that we do need to realize and keep in mind as we go forward is that
at many of the biological processes in our body that involve the movement of molecules such as water and interactions with proteins, are going to involve the bonding
or lack of bonding between water molecules and proteins. And
any time we're talking about bonding of one thing to
the next at the level of chemistry or biology for that matter, because they're really the same thing
we're talking about whether or not there are electrons present,
or whether or not there are charges that.
Opposite or the same and on and on
if you've ever heard of so called reactive oxygen species, what are our OSS or reactive oxygen species or so-called it free radicals or antioxidants? All
of that is really just describing the presence or absence of charges that are bound or Unbound. So for instance, if you hear about free
radicals, sounds pretty wild, right? Free radicals, what are free radicals? Free
radicals, can damage,
Cells. They don't always damaged cells but they can damage cells because they are essentially free electrons. They are a charge that sitting out there not bound to anything and therefore, can interact with the molecular structure of certain proteins and change those structures by binding to them or interfering. With the normal binding processes of those proteins to water or two other things and in that way, cause damage to those proteins and potentially damage to cells now, fortunately,
We ourselves have ways to deal with those free radicals and those are called antioxidants. Antioxidants are molecules that can arrive in different forms. Sometimes we think of antioxidants as vitamins, but they are also present in other things as well.
That essentially bind up those free radicals or repair the bonds between cells, so that the proteins are no longer
undergoing, these, let's just call them bad confirmations that damaged the functioning of our cells. So
there are many different theories of Aging. There are many different theories of disease but there is not a single disease either of brain or body that doesn't in some way involve the generation of what are called reactive
oxygen species.
These
free radicals and the damaging of cells at the level of
their individual organelles
and so forth. Nor is there a single disease of brain or body that has not been shown to benefit from having some antioxidant interference, get in the way of
that oxidative process.
So I realized today is pretty thick with nomenclature. For those of you that haven't already realize it, what you're learning here
is organic chemistry. So you can feel pretty good about the fact that if you can understand, the water
molecule and understand a little bit about what
Free electron is which is basically a charge that's out there that can potentially do
damage and the interactions of things like reactive
oxygen species and the ability of stable bonds to buffer against or repair certain damage to cells as
we're describing it here.
Well, then, what you're essentially
thinking about and what we're talking about is organic
chemistry. Now, since this is a discussion about chemistry as a service to try and
understand the biological effects of water, keep in mind that water it.
Itself, believe it or not, can act as an antioxidant
provided that it's bonding to things in the
proper way, which requires that to get into cells in the proper amounts and rates, which requires that the temperature and pH of that water,
be correct. And provided that there's enough water there and that, that water isn't bound to other things. That's not containing solids that are damaging, and potentially that it's carrying some of the good things, such as sodium, or
that there's potassium.
As and again, the so called electrolytes that allow cells to function. Well, okay, so that's a
bit of a trench of information and I don't want people to get overwhelmed or confused. What I'm trying to do here is paint a picture of the biology of water, understanding that when you ingest water drinking it down, or when you breathe water Vapors in the steam room, or on a human day, that water is
entering your system. It's accessing your
cells through these two mechanisms diffusion across cell, membranes or movement through aquaporin channels and then once inside those cells, it's
able to interact with and change the confirmation of different proteins and accelerate or slow down different cellular reactions. Everything from normal metabolism to blood pressure to damage cells, depending on a number of different features of that water, as well as what the
cells happen to be doing at any given moment. So, with that in mind, I'd like to turn our attention to
how water depending on its temperature. It's pH
how much we drank or how little we drink when we drink.
Water Etc. How that can impact the health disease and repair of different cells tissues and organs of our body.
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off. Let's talk about how
much water or more generally.
Seeking how much fluid each and all of us should drink each day and
how much fluid to drink depending on our
specific activities and environment. Now, this is perhaps the most commonly asked question when the topic of water comes out. How much water do I need to drink? The other
thing that comes up is a question, which is can't we just
follow our natural thirst that is can't we just
pay attention to when we're thirsty and then drink fluids and then that leads to the other question which is does the color of our urine provide
Any
indication as to whether or not we are under hydrated, over-hydrated or hydrating correctly. So let me answer each of these things, one at a
time. And in the backdrop, I want to highlight the fact that there are many many if not dozens, hundreds of studies pointing to the fact that when we are dehydrated, our brain doesn't function as well and our
body doesn't function as well. So, what I'm attempting to do in that statement is throw a net around the
enormous number of studies that have shown that.
Even a slight state of dehydration even
2%. Dehydration
can lead to a significant and meaningful impact.
That is a negative impact on our ability to, for
instance, carry out endurance
type behaviors. So our ability to
run on a treadmill and stopped at the point where we feel we can't continue is going to be negatively impacted that is. We will be able to
perform less work for Less period of time when we are even slightly dehydrated.
Traded likewise our strength is reduced by even slight dehydration, likewise our cognitive performance
including memory Focus creative thinking. Flexible thinking of different kinds are all significantly impaired. When we are in states of dehydration, now that raises an additional question that deserves attention, which is how do
we actually measure dehydration? Now, you hear different things. Like
if you pinch the skin on the top of your hand and it takes more than three seconds to
lay down again, flat, then you're
Did you hear that? You hear.
Okay, if you are to press on your fingernail and see a change in the color of the tissue just been below your fingernail which indeed does happen. And it does not go back to its original color within one to three seconds. Then your dehydrator. You hear things like this. If your ankles are swollen when you're wearing socks, you take off the socks and you can see the imprint of the socks
on your lower.
Limbs, that means your dehydrate, you hear this kind of stuff and you should probably be wondering is any of that true to some
Extent. It is true. Although it can vary quite a bit by how old you are whether or
not your skin on the top of your hand tends to be loose or not, depending on whether or not your
leaner or not. So, in other words, those are
not absolutely objective measures of dehydration.
Now, it is true that. If normally, you can pinch the skin on the top
of your hand and it returns to its normal flattened position within about one to two or three seconds, and it does not do that within five or more seconds.
There's a decent profit.
Ability that you're a little bit dehydrated that you need to ingest some fluid or that if you press down on your nail and you see the depression causes a transition from and of a pink color to a white color and then you release and it doesn't go back
to its original pinkish color within a few
seconds. Well, then there's a chance that you're dehydrated. But again, these are not
perfect measures of dehydration. You may be surprised to learn and I was surprised to learn
that most of the basis for these statements, like even a 2%
Dehydration State can lead to significant reductions in cognitive or physical performance
are based on not direct measures of hydration. But rather on measures of reductions in water intake which is a different thing, right? It's saying that ordinarily, a person of a given body. Weight needs x amount of fluid per day, and when they get even just two percent, less than that amount of
fluid, then their cognitive and/or, physical performance, has impaired rather
Then focusing on, dehydration of tissues now that might seem like a subtle distinction, but it's actually a meaningful distinction when you think about it. However, it's a meaningful distinction that we can leverage toward understanding how much water
or fluid, we need to drink each day. Now
there we can really point to Some solid numbers that believe it or not are fairly independent of body weight. Now, I say independent body weight. I'm referring to the amount of fluid that most healthy adults need a
Rest what I mean by at rest, I mean, when not exercising,
and when not in extremely hot environment. So I'm leaving aside
you desert Ultra marathoners or people that are
doing any kind of movement, or living in environments
that are very, very hot
here. I'm mainly referring to people that live most of their daily life in indoor environments could be air conditioned or not air conditioned, heated or not. Heated, well, we're trying to arrive at here. Are some numbers that can work across the board because, of course,
There are an infinite number of different conditions that each and all of you are existing in. So I'm not going to attempt to give you a body weight by activity by environment by humidity
formula calculation. In fact, no such calculation exist. However, there are formulas
that can put you into very stable Frameworks that is levels of water intake for periods of rest, when you're not exercising, and
For when you are exercising, that will ensure that you are hydrating with the one exception being if you are exercising, or if you are living in very, very hot conditions and you're not heat adapted to those conditions. So what are those numbers? In other words, what is the answer to the question of? How much fluid do we need each day? And here, I'm referring to fluid. I'm not distinguishing between water, caffeinated beverages, soda tea and so on, I'll discuss that in a moment. We can reasonably say that.
For every hour that you are awake in the first 10 hours
of your day, this is important in the
first 10 hours of your day, you should
consume on average,
eight ounces of fluid. Now for those of you that are using the metric system not ounces, eight ounces of fluid is approximately two hundred and thirty six
milliliters of water.
And for those of you that exists in the metric system and aren't used to think about ounces and vice versa,
something about a typical can of soda in the United States. It's 12 ounces
in Europe. Sometimes the cans of soda or a little bit smaller, it's a whole discussion on to itself, but
8 ounces of fluid that is 236 delicious. A 240 ML because we don't need to be too precise here of fluid on average every hour
for the first 10 hours of your day, which
translates to an average of 80 ounces of
fluid for the first 10 hours of your day. Or
Two thousand three hundred and 60 mL of water.
In other words, approximately 2 liters of water, plus a little bit more for the first 10 hours of your day.
Now, I want to be very clear that this does not mean that you need to ingest 8 ounces or 236 milliliters of fluid
on the hour every hour for the first 10 hours of your day. I'm certainly not saying that.
And in fact, most people are
going to find that they're going to ingest water in
boluses. That is they're going to have perhaps
Apps 16 ounces of water, 500 mL of water, it one portion of the day and then maybe a couple
hours of later that they'll drink some more water or some more coffee or soda or some other beverage and another portion of the day
I do think. However, it's important for most of us to take a step back and
ask ourselves
whether or not independent of any other activity or environmental conditions whether or not we are in fact,
ingesting, 80 ounces or
basically 2.4 liters
of
Order for that 10 hours
of the day that
spans from the time we wake up until ten hours later. Now, why am I you setting this 10? Our framework,
the reason I'm setting this 10, our
framework is that it turns out that your fluid requirements, even just at rest are vastly different in the time
from when you wake up until about 10 hours later as compared to the later
evening and nighttime. And here I'm referring to
people that are not doing night shifts. But if you are requesting a
A number of how much fluid to drink independent of our needs for fluid for exercise. That's going to be 8 ounces of fluid or 240 milliliters of fluid on average for every hour from the time when we wake up
until ten hours later,
that's the simple formulation, that should basically ensure that you're getting sufficient.
Baseline hydration for the cells and tissues of your
body. Now, if you are engaging in exercise, whether or not its endurance exercise, or
whether or not, it's resistance training exercise,
You are going to need additional fluids
in order to maximize the effects
of that exercise. And to avoid
dehydration and there too. We have some excellent numbers that we can look to excellent because they arrived from
research. And this is largely peeled
from the episode that I did with dr. Andy Galpin, professor of kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton. We did a six-episode series all about. Exercise,
everything from strength training, hypertrophy endurance nutrition, supplementation recovery, everything related to exercise can find all of that human lab,
And one of the components of those episodes that was discussed, but that some of you may have not heard is that there is a simple formula for how much fluid to ingest on average. Keep in mind this is on average when you're
exercising and I refer to this, as the
so-called Galpin equation, the Galpin equation states that you should take your body weight in pounds, divided that by 30. And that will give you the number of ounces of fluid to ingest.
15 to 20 minutes on average while exercising your body weight in pounds, divided by 30 equals the number of ounces of fluid to consume on average every 15 to 20 minutes. When I say on average, what I mean, is it is not the case that you need to stop every 15 or 20 minutes and consume
that volume of fluid. You could
sip it from moment to moment, you could wait half an hour or an hour and then consume a larger bolus of fluid a larger amount, although,
Though, it is recommended for performance sake, that you sip or consume beverages fairly consistently throughout your training, one's ability to do that is going to depend on a number of things, like gastric emptying time whether or not the particular exercise you're doing whether or not it's running or jumping is compatible with ingesting. Fluid on a regular basis or whether or not you need to do it at different intervals than every
15-20 minutes. Maybe it's every five minutes, maybe it's
every half hour, you have to adjust for you but if you were to take
The hour of exercise or the half hour of exercise, or the three hours of exercise and ask how much fluid to ingest, it's going to be that Galpin equation of body weight in pounds, divided by 30 equals the number of ounces for every 15 or 20 minutes. And of course, I can already hear screaming from the back, what about for those of us who follow the metric system? And there there's a
simple translation of the Galpin equation, which is that you need approximately 2 milliliters of water per kilogram of body weight every 15 to 20.
Minutes again, the Galpin equation converted into the metric system is going to be two milliliters of water per kilogram of body weight every 15 to 20 minutes on average. I'm sure a number of you are asking whether or not hydration prior to exercise is also important. It absolutely is. And if you follow the numbers that I talked about before
approximately 8 ounces or 240 milliliters of fluid intake per hour,
In the first ten hours
of waking that should establish a good Baseline of hydration heading into exercise which then prompts the next question. I often get, which is, is the amount of water that needs to be consumed, according to the Gallup and equation during exercise on top of or separate from debt. That is, does it replace the amount of fluid? That one needs at a basic level that 8 ounces or 240 ML? And there the answer sort of goes both ways. I think if you're going to exercise then
Obviously follow the Galpin equation in some way. Again, you don't need to be ultra specific about this. These are Ballpark figures that will ensure hydration. So we've set them a little bit higher, perhaps the needed to ensure more
hydration rather than
less. But basically, the short answer is if you're exercising for about an hour,
most people are exercising for an hour or two, probably not more than that. Most of my workouts are, certainly the resistance training workouts last about an
hour. Well, then you can replace the 8 ounces or the 240.
ML
of water that's required at Baseline with what you consume according to the Gallup and equation during that bout of exercise.
A common question is, if you are exercising in a heated
environment indoor/outdoor or you are somebody who
tends to sweat a lot and by the way, we can all get better at
sweating by sweating. More sweat is an
adaptation. So if you sit in the sauna
more, you're going to get better at sweating. If you exercise more,
especially if you wear more layers or if you do it in hotter temperatures or more humid temperatures, you're going to get
better at sweating over time and sweating is an adaptation.
Helps cool your body.
If you are
sweating a lot or you're in heat, how much fluid should you ingest
in general? I think it's safe to say that. You may want to increase the values on the Galpin equation by about fifty to a hundred percent. So either increase by 50% or double those numbers
if you're in a very hot environment or sweating an awful lot.
If you are sitting in the sauna I highly recommend consuming at least eight ounces and probably more like 16
ounces of fluid. So that translates again to about
240 or about 480. Let's just round up. 500 milliliters of
fluid for every 20 to 30
minutes that you are in a hot sauna. And then, of course, people ask well, how hot and it, okay, that starts getting really
detailed and we can't distinguish between
dry saunas and wet saunas.
And again too many variables but I would double your fluid intake for that hot
environment. Exercise or for that hot environments. Honest it
also if you are feeling
dehydrated
Okay. What is feeling? Dehydrated mean that actually has a definition that we can get into a little bit later but what we're really
talking about here is, if you are feeling as if your throat is dry, you
are quote, unquote parched or you're very thirsty. Well then there's absolutely no problem. With ingesting more fluids of 16 ounces of fluid or 500 milliliters of fluid per hour. While you're feeling parched, my
reading of the literature is that thirst is a reasonable guide for when we tend to be dehydrated, however, it is the case
that
at our thirst doesn't really keep up with our bodies level of
dehydration. And we know that based on some really nice studies that have explored the amount of fluid intake compared to the amount of urination, compared to the amount of physical output compared to the environment that one
happens to be in. These are sort of older studies in the realm of physiology, but
here's the basic rule of thumb, that's going to work for most people. If you are feeling
parched consume fluids,
ideally, you consume fluids that don't contain caffeine
or other diuretics diuretics.
Being substances that
cause the release the urination of fluid from the
body and or if you are consuming caffeine either prior to
or after bouts of exercise or even just at work or you work in an air-conditioned or otherwise dry cool or
hot environment that you try and include some sodium and ideally sodium, potassium, magnesium, the
electrolytes in that beverage could be a little pinch of sea salt with some lemon to adjust the taste a little bit. It could be an
electrolyte drink of element or some other.
Shorts are a lot of different types out there for most people, drinking pure water. And I
realize that many people do just like the taste of pure water
chances are you're going to have enough electrolytes unless you're
sweating quite a bit of, you're exercising quite a lot
and under conditions where you are consuming. Very few carbohydrates, you're going to excrete more fluid. If you are ingesting caffeine with a knots from tea or coffee, I highly recommend increasing your non caffeine fluid intake, about 2 to 1
for every volume of caffeine. So in other words, if
You have a 6 oz or 8 ounces of coffee, you're going to want
12 to 16 ounces of fluid, ideally fluid with electrolytes, or a little pinch of salt, in order to offset that dehydration,
hopefully, those will provide good
rules of thumb for what people want to do, when they're just moving about their day.
Again, underscored by the fact that even slight
levels of dehydration can really impaired, our cognitive and physical performance largely by
creating fatigue. But more often than not by creating brain fog, you know, I get so many questions
about
Brain fog, why do I have brain fog? Why don't have brain
fog? There is a vast literature showing that quality hydration, meaning, hydration, that matches the demands of humidity and
output as described in the equations. Before that, we went over a little bit before really
can enhance Clarity
of focus and overall energy. And we'll talk about why that is but I'll just allude to it a little bit
here. The reason why ingesting sufficient fluids can enhance our ability to focus and in fact can reduce brain fog and can increase physical Vigor and out.
It is not mysterious to us. We know that there are two mechanisms by which fluid intake triggers, elevated levels of alertness and it all has to do with the so-called sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system which is a real mouthful. But basically the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system has many of you heard me talk about before is the aspect of your nervous system that makes you more alert has nothing to do with emotional. Sympathy has to do with a bunch of neurons. In the middle of your spinal cord, called the sympathetic chain ganglia and some other related neural networks in your
Body, as well as regions of your brain. Like the locus coeruleus, that
release things like epinephrine and norepinephrine and make you more alert.
And in a kind of magnificent, Arrangement, or, I think magnificent Arrangement when we have fluid in our gut, and when our cells are well hydrated and believe it or not, when our bladder contains fluid within it, there is an elevation in activity of the sympathetic nervous system by way of two Pathways, one is mechanical, in fact,
Have so-called stretch receptors in our bladder and in our gut, these stretch receptors have
fancy names, like trp trip channels, as they're called or Piezo, which are these stretch sensing channels. This is the beautiful work of many Laboratories but in particular, David Julius and are
dumb Peta puchen they have
Julie says at UC San Francisco are Dem is at the Scripps Institute, they've discovered a bunch of channels in cells that sense things from cold to different mechanical,
so pressure including expansion of tissues, so called meccano
sensation and
basically what it all boils down to is
that when our bladder
has some fluid in it, when our stomach has some fluid in it and when our cells are sufficiently hydrated, they send information about the mechanical presence of that distension even. And I hear I'm not talking about being
like overly for, you know, full chock-a-block full of fluid or your bladder feeling, you know.
We really really full. We'll talk about that in a moment but when we are sufficiently hydrate there's a mechanical.
Litter of that, which is the expansion of our tissues because it has more fluid in it. And there are chemical signals as well, which is the movement of water across. Those aquaporin channels is actually understood at a
biological level by our
cells and sends information to the areas of the brain that are associated with
so-called sympathetic arousal and makes us more alert. This is actually what wakes us up in the middle of the night. If we have
consumed too much fluid prior to sleep and we need to urinate. We wake up. This
is a mechanism that is not
Not adequately developed in babies and young children. This is why babies young children often will wet their bed and believe it or
not both humans. And in dogs our ability to control urination voluntarily is something that we
actually learn babies just pee in their diaper dogs, just pee on the floor until their house broken or until a child learns to hold on to their urine until they go to the bathroom in a bathroom or particularly appropriate location
Outdoors or otherwise the point.
That hydration of the body is signaled to the brain. When we have enough
fluid in the tissues of our body,
when we consumed enough fluid, even if it hasn't already
arrived to the cells and tissues of our body
that is signal to the brain in the form of
alertness. And
that alertness is what translates to the enhanced
cognitive abilities that we have when we are well hydrated. It's also what translates to our
enhanced physical abilities when we are challenged with physical tasks. So when you look out on the landscape of all these studies that have shown impairments and physical
Or cognitive performance, under conditions of even slight dehydration, that all makes sense because our cells
need fluid and we need water,
but it also prompts the question of well does being well hydrated. Actually make our brain and body function. Better in the
context of physical and cognitive performance. And indeed the answer is, yes.
Now earlier, we were talking about these equations that you can
apply
and her again. I really want to emphasize that these equations were not meant to be followed down to the decimal point. They were
We meant an arm and as
crude, but sufficient guides for you to make sure that you're getting enough, hydration, depending on your level of activity and it rest,
if you recall, when we talked about those equations, I said you need about 8 ounces or 240 milliliters of fluid per hour for the first 10
hours of your day after waken. Now, why do I say for the first 10 hours? Well, it
turns out that the filtration of
fluids from your body which is accomplished, of course, by your kidneys
He's and by way of your bladder, and the excretion of fluid out
urethra. So called urination is strongly strongly circadian, dependent, meaning the cells of your kidney,
and the cells even of your gut. In fact, all
the cells of your body, but especially the cells of your kidney, which filter the fluid that comes into your
body and that make certain hormones like vasopressin, which is antidiuretic hormone,
all of that functioning of the kidney is under strong regulation by soul.
Called circadian, clock genes,
circadian, clock genes are genes, that are expressed in every cell, but that in certain cells of the body, very strongly impact, whether or not that organ. In this case, the kidney is going to be activated. Meaning functioning at a very high level or at a reduced level and we can make all of this very simple by simply stating, what's contained in this beautiful review that I'll provide a link to if you want to learn more called circadian rhythms in the kidney. And basically what is known is that for the first 10 hours after waking
Your kidney is filtering fluid within your body at a very
rapid rate. There are number of
different cell types that do that but they are basically taking that fluid pulling out any contaminants using hormones such as antidiuretic hormone vasopressin to adjust. Whether not you're going to hold onto fluid or release more fluid from your body in the form of urine. Depending on in the salt concentration,
depending on how
much fluid you need, your work output, the conditions you're in, all of that.
However, at about 10 hours, after waking your kidney, really starts to reduce its overall level of functioning. Now, that doesn't mean that your kidney cannot filter fluid 11 or 12 or 16 hours after waking, but it becomes far less efficient at doing so, and thank goodness, it does because you do not want your kidney filtering fluid. At the same rate at midnight, assume you wake up at say, 7:00 or 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. that it was filtering fluid at 10 a.m.
In fact, we can say that if you want to reduce your night time waking in order to urinate, which is a common, common question, and concern that many people have, how can I avoid waking up in the middle of night to urinate? And there I say It's Perfectly Normal to wake up once maybe twice each night to urinate. But if you want to reduce the number of times that you wake up in order to urinate across
the night, maybe even make that number zero times,
you will greatly benefit by doing three things.
First of all, make sure that your hydrating sufficiently during the daytime
/. The equations that we talked about earlier
that will ensure that you are
not excessively thirsty in the evening and therefore consuming a lot more fluid
second and related
to that first point
is that you do want to reduce your fluid intake at night provided
you hydrated sufficiently throughout the day
and believe it or not the rate at which fluid moves from your gut and in
To the cells and tissues of your body. And then from your bladder into urine is determine not just by the volume of fluid you ingest. But also the rate at which you ingest that fluid and you might be thinking that's crazy, that makes no sense at all. Right, if I drink a ton of fluid slowly it doesn't it still mean that I'm going to urinate a ton. Yes and no it also stands to reason that you might ask if I ingest very little fluid but I do it very fast.
Is it going to be the case that I'm going to urinate it out very quickly? Well yes and no. The point is that the fluid filtration systems of your body that
range from the gut to the bladder and include the kidney. Of course,
depend not just on the volume. But on the
rate of fluid that you ingest,
because of those McKenna
sensors that we talked about earlier,
if you gulp down a bunch of fluids, you are going to excrete those fluids more quickly than if you slip sip them. Slowly. Excuse me, sip them slowly. So here's what I recommend,
And throughout the day, when you're trying to get your adequate yield of water or other beverages, feel free to gulp that fluid or sip it.
I'm a gulper, not a sipper,
but many of you are going to be sippers, not gulpers consume fluid at the rate that feels right to you but feel comfortable gulping that fluid. However in the evening if you are somebody who has challenges with waking up excessively in the middle of the night. Reduce your
fluid intake provided you hydrated properly throughout the
day and
I suggest consuming no more than five. Maybe eight ounces of fluid between the time of ten hours after waking and when you go to sleep. Again, if you're very thirsty or you under hydrated, it's very hot. Feel
free to ingest more fluid please.
But most people will find that if they reduce their fluid intake, to about 5 ounces or less of fluid
in that later part of the day, after 10 hours of having woken up and before
sleep, and they sip those beverages as opposed to gulping them that they will.
We'll have fewer
bouts of waking up in the middle of the night, to go to the restroom and ideally zero. Let's talk about tap water and here. I have to take a deep breath. Not a deep gulp, but a deep
breath because in researching tap water, and what's contained in tap
water in different regions, not just in the US, but around the world,
I confess the picture is a pretty scary one. I want to be clear, I'm not somebody who naturally orient's towards fear or conspiracy theories. However,
In researching tap water for this episode, by way of looking at the peer-reviewed research, meta-analyses, reviews, specific research articles, we're specific hypotheses were tested and in talking with experts in toxicology and so on. It's a pretty Grim picture. Frankly, when one looks at what's contained in most tap water and whether or not the compounds that are contained in tap, water are present in sufficient concentrations to negatively
impact our health
And the bad news is
that much if not all tap
water leave you're not much. If
not all tap, water contains
things that are bad for the biology of our
cells. There is a silver lining. However in the Silver Lining is that very simple steps that are very inexpensive. Can be used to adjust
that tap water to make it, not just safe to drink, but that makes it perfectly fine to drink. So that's the good news and we'll get to that in a moment.
If you are somebody who is interested in whether or
not tap water contains,
Means things like endocrine disruptors hormone disruptors that can negatively impact reproductive Health in males or
females or both as a wonderful review. Wonderful because it's so thorough, although the news isn't great, it's very thorough which is great, which is entitled endocrine disruptors in water, and their effects on the reproductive system. This is a review from 2020 that analyzes water from a bunch of different sources within the
world
and essentially focuses on a few key components. First of all, if
Kisses on the concentration of minerals, that is magnesium, and calcium within water. Many people don't realize this, but so-called hard water, sounds
terrible, right? But hard water is water
that contains magnesium and calcium which turns out to be a good thing.
Some water contains more magnesium and calcium
other water contains less. They looked at the presence of magnesium and calcium because that is going to impact the
pH of water. In
general, the higher concentrations of magnesium and calcium
in water. The higher, the pH that is the more alkaline that
Is and the lower levels of magnesium and calcium, the more acidic or
lower pH that water tends to
be. The other thing that this review addresses is the concentration of. So called DB PS dog. Bulldog
porcupines DB peas,
which are
disinfection byproducts, contained in water.
So obviously local governments. The government wants, your drinking water
to be clean. They don't want contaminants at. They don't
want sewage in that water. They don't want chemicals.
Uncle contaminants that are going to make people immediately 6. So they treat water, water treatment, plants treat water with disinfection products and those disinfection products,
create things called disinfection byproducts and the presence of those DBS are just disinfectant byproducts
can strongly
impact the pH of water by
way of changing the concentrations of magnesium and calcium put differently. I do believe that governments are trying to provide people with clean water but in doing so oftentimes will.
Reduce things to that water that are not good for
us. Now it's very clear that DB PS can cause endocrine
disruption in ways that are not good for Reproductive health. I did a very long fact, four and a half hour episode on fertility and vitality.
That was male and
female fertility, by the way, and vitality that. Again, you can find a huberman lab.com that talks about all the biological processes involved in the generation of healthy, eggs, and sperm, and and creating a healthy embryos implantation, embryos and so forth.
It's very clear that DB PS have been shown to
disrupt ovarian function, spermatogenesis and fertility outcomes.
Even at concentrations of dpp's, that are
present in drinking water that comes from
the tap. Now does that mean that you shouldn't drink tap water? Well, the answer to. That is a, it depends. What does it depend on? Well, depends on several things. First of all, I highly recommend that everybody go online and put in your zip code and asked for a water analysis of water
that.
Out of the tap in that zip code,
this is something that is readily available online. At least to my knowledge and unfortunately, there's no specific one site that I can send everyone to, to get an in-depth analysis
of the drinking water that comes out of your TAP.
However, I highly recommend that you go online and put in your ZIP code or Municipal area code, and figure out whether or not your water contains x amount of DBP sry amount of dpp's
Now,
of course, you're going to get a bunch of values back and unless you're a toxicologist probably not going to know what those values mean.
But what you're really looking for is whether or not there are
high low or moderate levels of fluoride in that drinking water. Why do I say that? Well,
there are studies that show that the concentration of fluoride in drinking water is of particular concern for the thyroid
hormone system of the body. Now,
thyroid hormone has a lot of different roles in brain end.
D and thyroid hormone is very important for everything from metabolism to levels of energy. When thyroid levels are disrupted or thyroid receptors are disrupted, it can lead to depression.
When thyroid hormones are optimized, it can lead to Optimal
mood if there is such a thing. But in
other words, it helps keep your
mood elevated. It relates to everything from sleep to reproduction. Thyroid hormone is
involved in many many things, including bone health, and tissue Health generally. So especially every biological process in your body is impacted by
fireworks.
Hormone. And there is a study that I'd like to highlight which was published in 2018 and the title of the study is impact of drinking water fluoride on human thyroid hormones. This was a case control study. So this is not an
extensive analysis of many individuals. However, what it
shows is that fluoride negatively impacts fibroid, stimulating hormone and so-called T3 levels. So you have thyroid hormones, T3 and T4 even in the standard concentrations that are present of. And here's an important number is zero point.
Five milligrams per liter. Okay, so if you can get ahold of the fluoride concentrations in your tap water and find out whether or not, the concentrations are at below or exceed 0.5 milligrams per liter, what you will find is that even just 0.5 milligrams per liter of water can disrupt thyroid function and this is going to be a particular concern for people to have familial. So genetically related fibroid issues or that are concerned.
With keeping your thyroid hormone
levels healthy which I think is everybody.
So I am telling you that you should try and get ahold of some
data about the water that comes out of your tap. If you intend on drinking tap water and probably even if you don't just know what's in your drinking
water, your local government, should provide that information and or it should be readily available online. And in particular, I think it's worthwhile
to address how much fluoride is present in your drinking water.
Again, I don't want to
create a lot of scare. I'm not trying to trigger fear here. I do think, however,
By way of reading this review, by way of reading the paper that I just referred to a moment ago and links to these are going to be providing the show. Note captions,
that there is extensive evidence, that elevated levels of
fluoride in drinking water are simply not good for us. Now, that could open a whole discussion of why fluoride is in our drinking water in the first place at all.
But leaving that aside, it seems to me that most everybody should know how much fluoride is in the drinking water and ideally everybody. Yes, everybody is.
Filtering.
Their drinking water. Now, that
raises the question of how best to
filter drinking water
and that brings an answer of. It depends on a couple of
things. First of all, how healthy or unhealthy do you know yourself to be?
Okay. So if you're somebody who has no health issues, you have plenty of vigor, you're sleeping well at
night. You've no
autoimmune disease. You're not
aware of any health concern, minor or
major. Well then perhaps you're somebody. That
doesn't want to filter your water. I would argue that. Why
wouldn't you employ some very
Low or even zero cost approach to filtering your water.
There are going to be other individuals who are suffering particular
elements of brain or body or both that absolutely should be filtering their drinking water. If they're getting their drinking, the water from their tap because it is
pretty well established. Now that
tap water contains, a lot of these disinfectant byproducts as well
as, in most cases
exceeding, the threshold of fluoride that we know to be healthy for us. How should you filter your tap water?
Water. Well
you have everything ranging from the so-called Britta type filters to these going to be carbon type filters or other filters. That you essentially put over a container or a compartment, we can pour the water over it and goes into the compartment below. Will those work are they sufficient to
filter out the disinfection
byproducts? The general answer is yes. Provided you change the filters often enough. However, it is not
thought, unfortunately not thought that they filter out. Sufficient fluoride. So, what I
highly recommend is, depending on your budget
It that you go online and you search for at-home
water filters, that can
filter out. Fluoride, there are a number of straightforward and inexpensive tools to do that. And
here I don't have any relationship to any of the water filters or things that I'm going to mention. Now, want to be very clear about that. There's no brand coder affiliation here.
I'm simply trying to direct you to resources. That will allow you to filter your tap water for it to be more safe for you to consume, in a way that meets your budget with the
understanding that people have.
Very different disposable
incomes. So the range of cost here is going to be pretty
tremendous. I just want to get that out of the way. First, you know, there are water
filters that you can use repeatedly the. So these are what are referred to as pitcher filters that are less than $100. Now, keep in mind that that's a one-time purchase except for the replacement of the filters, which fortunately doesn't have to be done too often. So there are different filters. I'll provide a link to one that I found. That is at least by my read of the lowest
possible cost of this is the
so-called clearly filtered water.
Picture with affinity filtration. So this is a filter that can adequately remove, fluoride lead, bpa's, glyphosate hormones, and some of the other harmful things that are
contained in most tap water again. I do
realize that for some people even an
80 US dollar cost is going to be prohibitive but
do realize that what you're doing here is you're purchasing a unit that can be used repeatedly over and
over the reason why it's lower
cost than some of the different filtration approaches that I'll talk about in a moment are that
so you can't really put all the
drinking water that would use say for an entire week or for your tire month in one picture, you're going to have to repeatedly pour water
into the
picture in order to filter it.
Now, as I mentioned before the range on
water filter costs for filters, that can adequately remove, fluoride and all the other things that you want out of your top water is immense fact you can find, you know, whole house water filters that are, you know, two
thousand dollars or more. Again, these are going to be filters that are
going to be in your garage or in a
Laundry room that are going to basically pull from the the
piping system of your house and
deliver purified water. Technically, it's not purified, but that's removing these contaminants
and fluoride from all the things in your house.
You can effectively drink from any or all the things in your house. That's what explains, the higher
cost I think. Most people are probably not going to have the disposable income
or have the opportunity
to include one of these whole house
filters. Although if you
do have the means and it's important to you, you could do that. And then there are going to be what I would call intermediate.
Item. So systems that cost somewhere between 200 and 500 dollars. Probably, one of the more common ones or popular ones is so-called Berkey filter system. These are filter systems that again, remove the things that you want removed from
your tap water, and they can do it at higher volumes and they're typically countertop units, they don't require any plug-in typically, or they only require Reef, plug-in, and electricity, and they're going to filter out many, many leaders are tens of liters of water, so that you can always have access to that.
Filtered watered, any time of day or night without having to pour over into the
picture. So I mentioned these different options because again, I realize that people have different levels of disposable income. As far as I know. There's no tablet or simple mechanism that can be purchased as a transportable, you know pill that you can just simply throw in water and remove the contaminants. If anyone is aware of one that can adequately remove fluoride
and other contaminants please put in
the in the comment section on YouTube that be the best
place.
And so that I and everyone else can see it, but
hopefully, the mention of the different filtration systems. I mentioned, will give you some
choices that I would hope would fall within the range that one could potentially afford
an important note, about filtration, just as in our body, there are mechanisms to Signal mechanical changes and chemical changes
that occur in our gut, in our brain at cetera
elsewhere. And in general, both mechanical, and chemical changes are signaled across the body to invoke different
changes, whether or not those are
Are you know a
response of the immune system or to make us more alert or more asleep etcetera. So to filtration capitalizes on mechanical and chemical filtration what I mean by that is when you run a fluid water or any other fluid through a filter, those filters are doing two things. They are physically constraining which molecules can go through by creating portals pores
that allow certain sized
molecules to go through and not others. And
Not always they contain certain chemicals themselves. Like those filters have been treated with certain chemicals that neutralize certain other chemicals. Okay? So you may be wondering how when you filter water, you know, magnesium and calcium can get through but fluoride doesn't, and that's because these filters have been very cleverly designed in order to neutralize
fluoride, or to prevent large
molecules such as sediment and dirt, which is kind of easy to imagine being filtered, but also to allow certain small molecules,
Calcium, which is small ish or magnesium, which is smallish, to still pass through into our drinking water. And this is wonderful, because what it means is that by filtering, our water, using any of the methods that we talked about before, you're still going to get whatever. Magnesium and calcium was present in that
water while still adequately, removing the fluoride and other disinfectant byproducts. Now, what, if you can't afford any of those options, okay?
Well here you have an interesting zero cost option. It's not as good as the other ones, a filtering that water but it is an option and I do think it's important.
Portent to give options to people
who don't have any disposable income for the purpose of filtering, their water,
which is to draw
a gallon or five gallons or maybe even more tap water
out of the tap and put it into some, some container, some vessel.
So could be one gallon, 5-gallon 10 gallon container
and then to let that
tap water sit for some period of time
to allow some of the sediment to drop to the Bottom. Now you might say well there's no sediment, there's nothing contained in that
tap water.
Isn't fluoride diluted in the water and indeed, the answer to that is, yes.
However, there is some evidence that letting tap water, sit out at room temperature and outside the pipes that deliver that water can help remove some
not all of the contaminants in that water.
If however, you are filtering, the
water, using any of the methods that I talked about a few moments ago,
you do not need to do this. Okay. I realize there's a whole world out there
of people who insist on putting their water in the Sun
or only keeping it in certain containers and putting it out for a few days before they can.
Stood that to me seems a bit extreme if you want to do that, be my guest. But I don't think most people need to do that. However, I do believe that for people who have zero disposable income to devote to paying for any kind of filtration system for their tap water, that taking that tap water and putting into some container at room temperature and keeping it room temperature for a half day or a day or more. And then pouring off the top two thirds of that water into another container. And consuming the water from that second container is going to
Move some not all of the contaminants that one would need to be concerned about
and here I should mention something that I neglected to mention a few moments ago. If you were going to do this zero cost option and let the water sit out for a bit, you would want that water to sit uncapped.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that before. Uncapped, of course, trying to keep things from falling into that water.
In fact, you could even put a little bit of cloth above it, so you don't want things falling into that water, but you want certain things to be able to evaporate
off, and you also want some of the sediment to drop.
Down.
And the reason why this process of letting
water sit out would work at all.
Is because many of the contaminants contained within water are not present because of the source of that water, or even the treatment of that
water. But rather because of the pipes of that water arrives, to your glass, or your the pot, that you have from.
Okay. And here, again, there is an infinite number of variables. So some people are living in buildings for which the pipes are very, very old, but very, very
clean, believe it or not some people.
We are living in newer buildings and structures that have new pipes, but for which the seals between those pipes, contain things that are not good for you to consume. So, by letting water sit out for a while, you are able to remove some of the contaminants present within the pipes of your home, and the building, and even the pipes that
lead to your home or apartment. Now,
some people get really obsessed with this. All tap water thing and really want to find out all the details about the pipes and what sorts of hard metals and how much magnesium and how much
calcium are present in their water. There are ways that you can test your drinking water for those sorts of things.
Most people, I realize including myself are simply not going to do that if you want to know what I do.
I tend to drink water. That
is filtered through one of these lower cost
filters. Or if I'm going to be consuming a lot of fluid,
I will drink certain kinds of fluid that later. I'll tell you, I've been
doing an experiment for sake of this episode looking at. So
called molecular hydrogen water, which sounds very fancy and esoteric and almost little wacky, but it turns out has
Has largely to do with the amount of magnesium and calcium and the pH of that
water. So, if you are somebody who has a very low budget, or simply just wants to spend a very small amount of money to, and try and still drink tap water. There
is absolutely a way to do that safely, but it does require a few of these steps. So on the topic of magnesium and calcium,
this relates, as I mentioned earlier to the quote-unquote hardness of water. So what of the hardness of water, you know, is it better to have more magnesium and calcium in your water or less?
Some people don't like the taste of hard water. They prefer the
taste of water that has
less magnesium and calcium. However, there I would encourage you to take a step back and consider some of the literature. In fact, I'll mention a paper in particular,
now, published in
2019, which describes the quote, regulations for calcium magnesium or hardness, and drinking water in the European Union.
Member states, turns out in Europe, they do very detailed Water Analysis and that's present in a number of really high qualities. Scientific Publications. This was a paper published.
Pushed in regulatory toxicology and pharmacology.
And they cite a number of different references in the introduction. That for instance, in here I'm quoting statistically significant inverse association between magnesium and cardiovascular mortality. Now, again, that's a an association, this is not causal but higher magnesium and water lower
cardiovascular. Mortality
they go on to say the highest exposure category which are people consuming drinking water with magnesium, contents of 8.3.
Team point four milligrams per liter again, when you get your Water Analysis, you can compare against. Some of these values was significantly associated with decreased likelihood of cardiovascular
mortality by
25%. Compared with people consuming, magnesium content of two point, five to eight
point two milligrams per liter. Okay,
so what this basically shows and by the way, the
reference to that, I'll also provide a link to in the show no caption.
What this basically States is that higher, magnesium containing water and it
Zout higher, magnesium, and calcium, and containing
water. So called harder water.
May not taste as good to you, but turns out to be better for you now, whether or not it can prevent you from getting cardiovascular disease, I don't know. In fact, I would
probably just State know, it probably won't prevent you from cardiovascular disease. You still need to do all the other things that are important for avoiding cardiovascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease for
that. And what to do,
in order to avoid cardiovascular disease, I strongly encourage you to listen to the episode with dr. Peter Atia, that's coming out.
Few weeks that gets deep into that topic and the actionable items for avoiding cardiovascular disease.
But basically, as this study quotes, there is a growing consensus among epidemiologists and epidemiological evidence along with clinical and nutritional evidence, that's strong enough to suggest that new guidance should be issued in terms of how these different
sources of tap water should enhance. Not deplete the amount of magnesium and calcium in that water. Now, this
ought to raise a very important
question.
In in all of your minds, which is why is it that magnesium and calcium concentrations are relevant to cardiovascular disease? Is it something about what magnesium dozen cells, or what calcium does in cells? Are we
all magnesium and calcium deficient? Well, it turns out that's not the case, the major effect by, which magnesium and calcium
in water are
likely to
impact things like blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and other aspects of cellular
function. Turn out to be somewhat cryptic. But we can make that
Cryptic aspect very clear by staying that when we have more magnesium in particular, but also calcium present in our
water, so cold hard
water. You increase the amount of hydrogen in that water becomes what we call hydrogen, rich, and the pH of that
water is increased.
Now, again, this does not mean that we are trying to change the pH of the cells of our body in any kind of meaningful way. In fact, we don't want to do that, we want the pH of the cells of our body to
stay in particular ranges as I mentioned earlier,
But having more magnesium and more calcium in our water, that is increasing the hardness of our water changes, the pH of that water. And it turns out that the elevated pH of water, that is pH of water. That tends to be somewhere between High sevens. So we can say, 7.9 up to even nine or nine point two is going to be more readily absorbed and is going to more favorably impact the function of
ourselves then lower
H water again, I want to restate this because I'm a little bit concerned that maybe a clip of this is going to be taken and and send elsewhere and someone will get the impression that I'm saying that we
actually want to drink high pH water that we all need to buy expensive. High pH are turns out that's not the case.
If you're consuming, tap water from a location where levels of magnesium are sufficiently high in that top order again, where the level of magnesium is eight point three to nineteen point four milligrams per liter of
water that
Is if the water coming out of your TAP is
hard enough. Well, then chances are. You don't need to enhance
the pH of that, water change, its magnesium
concentration. If however the water that you're drinking from the tap filtered or not, I would hope filtered
Contains less than eight point three milligrams per liter of magnesium will. Then chances are the pH of that water is going to be low enough. That it's not going to be lending itself to some of the favorable
Health components that higher pH water can
notice. I did not say that lower pH AKA more. Acidic water is bad for you, I didn't say that. I said that higher pH water can be good for you. So let's talk about how and why?
Higher pH water can be good for you and some of the best. And in fact, very
inexpensive sources of higher
pH, magnesium,
enhanced or simply tap water that contains sufficient. Magnesium can be used and accessed. Many of you are probably wondering whether or
not you can simply boil your tap water and thereby decontaminate the tap water
there, I want to caution you. It turns out that some of the
contaminants present, in water are actually made worse by heating
water. And again, I don't want to open
up, you know, a
Whole catalog of different fears.
I like all of you, I presume
use water to cook pasta rice because I'm an omnivore. I do consume those things. I confess if I make your
mate or any kind of tea or coffee, I tend to use
a higher quality, water source than tap water. Even if that top water is filtered because I like the taste for more, if I use a really good source of water and again because I'm not consuming those Beverages and enormous volumes that becomes a relatively inexpensive and
ever
But I would caution people against using boiling or heating of water
as the only method to decontaminate their tap water. And instead to also rely on some of the filtration systems that I talked about
before. And as long as we're talking about the
temperature of water,
there is sort of an ongoing
debate online. It's not a huge debate, but a number of people engaged in this debate as to, whether or not
drinking, really cold water,
or room temperature. Water is better for you or worse for you.
This is a tough one to resolve.
It turns out that if water is very, very cold, that is if you drink it and you can
feel that cold water making its way down to your gut. And you can actually feel it as cold with in your gut that sort of a, you know, back of the envelope or I should say direct within the gut measure of Cold versus body temperature water
that it is going to be slower to absorb. That is you're going to
feel it. Sloshing around in your stomach for a bit longer than if you were to consume water. That is slightly warmer.
Now, that is not to say that you should ingest warm water or room temperature water.
However, many people find that when they drink
very cold, water, or ice water
that indeed, it can alter the kind of sensation of the lining of their stomach in ways that at least to them
feel like that altering their digestion and
that makes sense, the cells that line the
gut are very temperature sensitive. You want this. So for a number of reasons, including not consuming food that is excessively hot or cold or
Damaging your gut. But
in general, most people know the temperature of fluid that they want to ingest and ingest that temperature of fluid. So most people for instance, on a
cold day, want a warm or hot fluid does that mean that you're not going to absorb that warmer hot fluid? No, of course, it doesn't. You're going to absorb that fluid one way or the other. So, drink fluids at the temperatures that are to your liking in that moment. In other words, what you desire in that moment, and don't worry so much about trying to avoid cold beverages or trying to make sure that you're always consuming room temperature water is
Too cold water. So now with your understanding of
hard water, soft water magnesium, the relationship between
magnesium calcium in the pH of water. And remember, our earlier conversation where we talked about how higher pH water is actually going to
move out of the gut and into the body, a bit more readily and across those aquaporin channels, more readily than lower pH more acidic
water. Well, that raises the question of whether or not all these different forms
of water that are out there. Reverse
osmosis water, distilled water, double distilled
water.
Deuterium depleted.
Water alkaline water as it's often called
whether or not any,
or all of that has
meaningful Health outcomes. Here we can address some of those items pretty quickly. For instance, distilled water and double distilled water is essentially distilled of
that is, it has magnesium and calcium removed from it.
So my
recommendation would be to not drink distilled water.
There may be specific circumstances where somebody
Very high levels of blood magnesium or calcium or calcium stores within the body
that would necessitate them drinking only distilled water but that seems like a very isolated kind of Niche case. So in
general consuming
distilled water is just simply not necessary.
Now, in terms of reverse
osmosis water, what is reverse osmosis water? Reverse osmosis water is water, that has been passed
repeatedly through a series of filters that are designed to remove the kinds of contaminants
we were talking about earlier. So some of
The basic contaminants like disinfection,
by-products, fluoride and some other large and small molecules that leaves, the water. Ideally still containing, magnesium and calcium. Although, there's some evidence that reverse osmosis water can deprive water of some of the magnesium and calcium. So if you are going to use reverse osmosis filters and drink up, reverse osmosis water, you want to make sure that you're still getting the Magnesium concentrations present in that water that we talked about earlier, but in general, reverse osmosis
Is water is considered safe, but and for many people, this is going to be an important, but but very expensive to access the reverse osmosis filters require a lot of changing the filters purchasing reverse osmosis water in its stable form within containers. These are typically last containers is going to be pretty expensive and prohibitive for most people that said, there are a number of people out there that really like the taste of reverse osmosis water. They report it as feeling more
smooth. They
think of
Osmosis water as quote, unquote, giving them energy to be quite honest. There's no direct studies of the subjective, sensation of water in the mouth, and in the gut and its relative health effects. Again, the smoothness
of water as one drinks it and goes down the gut.
Really has no direct relationship to the
quote-unquote hardness or softness of water. I know that's going to shock a number of you. You probably think we'll hard water is going to be hard to drink and it turns out that's not the case. In
fact,
People find that with elevated levels of magnesium and calcium in water. It actually
tastes smoother or softer in their mouth. So hard water
tastes smooth or
soft. I know it's all very counterintuitive, but I think it's important to point this out because
a number of times you'll hear or read about filtering water so that it tastes smoother and better and often times that's happening because the quote-unquote hardness of
water that is the concentrations of magnesium. And calcium are actually increasing. So if you're somebody who's curious
about reverse osmosis water,
Mm, and you can afford the filters or the reverse
osmosis water already
pre-filtered. Please be my guest, you know,
drink it. I'm certainly not trying to prevent anyone from drinking it
but there's no peer reviewed evidence that I am aware of that conclusively shows that drinking reverse
osmosis water is far better for us than drinking other types of water provided. The other types of water are adequately filtered, a fluoride, and the sorts of disinfectant byproducts that we talked about earlier. So, what about hydrogen water? You may have heard of this or hydrogen and enriched water or electrolyze.
Just
water as a way to access hydrogen and Rich
water. All this might sound pretty crazy to some of you. Now, fortunately, for sake of today's discussion, we can take a number of the different categories of, let's call it
unique categories of water
that have been described including deteriorate, depleted water. And by the way, deuterium is something that relates to the presence of hydrogen
ions in water and put very simply water. That
is extracted from sources that are closer to
To sea-level tend to have more deuterium in them than water. That is extracted from sources, further from sea
level. So up in the mountains, for instance, and from Springs further away from oceans as you get closer sea level, the sources of water
separate from seawater, tend to have more deuterium, which relates to the enrichment, or lack of hydrogen,
within that water, or free hydrogen with, in that water.
I warned you, this was all going to sound pretty Niche and that we're going to get a little bit into the chemistry, but now I'm going to make it all very simple for you. At least for the non Aficionado
electrolyzed reduced water, which is a method of using electricity, to alter the conformation of the water molecules, and their rates of movement, as well, as well as so-called hydrogen, Rich water, or hydrogen,
enriched water,
or deteriorating
depleted water.
All have the property of having higher levels of pH than other forms of water, such as distilled, water reverse osmosis water and generally higher pH than the kind of water that comes out of your TAP, unless you live in a region, where your tap water has very high levels of magnesium in it, which does occur in certain regions of the world, but is not that common more. Typically, the water that comes out of your TAP, does not have enough magnesium, meaning not as much magnesium.
Easy minute, as you would like.
And this, I believe explains in a fairly straightforward way. Why there is such an appeal of these pH,
enhanced or alkaline Waters or electrolyze reduce water or deteriorating, depleted water there
couple of reasons. But first of all anytime someone is consuming A specialized
form of water chances are,
it's going to be filtered of the disinfectant byproducts,
fluoride and the other things that you really
don't want to water. So already the water is going to be cleaner than would be coming out of the tap.
So that's going to indirectly, explain a number of the so-called health benefits, both subjective and perhaps even objective as
we'll talk about that can result from consuming these other. Let's say
more, esoteric, forms
of water. At least not of simple. Tap water.
However, if you look at hydrogen or hydrogen enriched water, you really need to take a step back and ask. What is
that? You know, what are we really talking
about? Because it turns out that you can create hydrogen, enriched Water by putting tab.
Lets's of magnesium itself, small amounts of magnesium dissolving. Those in water, it will
give off a kind of
gaseous solution. You'll see a bunch of bubbling in there, you certainly want to dilute that tablet and then consume the water. And yes, it's true. What you heard about in red, from these commercial sources, you do want to consume that water within about, you know, five to 15
minutes after that tablet, completes dissolving. Now, why would you do this? And I should say that I have now
started doing this. Not
because
Because I necessarily think that it's so necessary or so,
beneficial talk about my experience in a moment. I did it in anticipation of
this episode because I was researching water and hydrogen and Rich water and all these alkaline Waters
and what became very clear to me based on reading a, fantastic two-part review. It's a very extensive review entitled, at least the first part is entitled electrolyzed, reduced water. Molecular hydrogen is the exclusive agent responsible for the therapeutic effects and then there's a second part to this review.
This is how extensive is entitled electrolyzed, reduced water, number to safety concerns and Effectiveness, as a source of hydrogen water, what this review, which we've linked to in the show notes points to, is that all of the health benefits of these different forms of water that you hear about out, there deuterium depleted, hydrogen, and Rich, Etc. All seem to boil down. No pun intended, no, boiling included. I should say to the elevation in hydrogen. That translates.
To, and here's the really meaningful change the elevation in
PH that occurs when you hydrogen and Rich water. Now,
there are not a lot of clinical studies looking at hydrogen and Rich water, but there are starting to be more than a few. And one that I'd like to point out and that will link to was published fairly recently, which is entitled hydrogen Rich water reduces inflammatory responses and prevents a ptosis. A ptosis is a naturally occurring, cell death during development and is generally used
To describe cell death of the body. Sometimes this can be good, cell death,
by the way, removing cells that need to be removed
again. The title of the paper is hydrogen, Rich water reduces inflammatory responses, and prevents a ptosis of peripheral blood cells in healthy adults, a randomized, double-blind controlled trial. Now, this paper looked at the effects of drinking, 1.5 liters per day of hydrogen and Rich water, for a period of four weeks, they did find significant positive
Benefits of reduced inflammation. And they found these changes by way of analyzing things like interleukin 6 and some of the other interleukins which are markers of inflammation, they controlled very nicely
for the fact that people were
still consuming other forms of water and liquid and coffee Etc. Although they made sure that they weren't consuming too much coffee and soda. In addition to this hydrogen, enriched water. But what this paper shows is that indeed increasing the free hydrogen and water can improve certain
Certain Health metrics in these cells.
And this is in keeping with some of the subjective reports that people
have stated out there. And
that I myself experienced, I have to say that by drinking hydrogen, Rich,
water, which I'll tell you how to do fairly inexpensively in a moment.
You do get the subjective experience of having more energy of feeling better, quote unquote. Now, keep in mind, of course, the placebo effect is very real and Powerful effects so it could just be Placebo. Although in this
Paper. They did. Of course, include a placebo group. So people didn't know if they were getting hydrogen. Which Rich water or
non hydrogen Rich water. I should also mention that the improvements in health metrics that they observed in the study, were only observed for
individuals, older than 30 years old.
Why? That is? I don't know the conclusions. These authors came to in terms of how these individuals older than 30 achieved
lower levels, or I should say reduced levels of
inflammation and improved markers.
Of other aspects of biological function is that the hydrogen water improved, the biological antioxidant potential
of certain cell types. And again the cell types that they mainly focus on where these peripheral blood cells in this particular study.
Now, how could this be? Why would this be? Well, this goes back to our earlier discussion about reduction in reactive,
oxygen species, so-called are OSS and reductions in free radicals that can damage cells. So
if all of this is sounding very convoluted,
I can understand why, however, what I
like about this study and the two reviews that I mentioned, a moment ago, is that these studies don't really say that hydrogen. Rich
water is what's essential.
What these studies really point to is that the changes in PH
of water that enhancing the hydrogen in water can
create is what leads to the
enhanced either
absorption and or ability of cells to utilize
that higher pH water.
Again, not by changing the
pH of the body or of cells.
But simply because higher
pH water, or we could perhaps more accurately State less acidic water. That is harder water that contains more magnesium and calcium seems to be more readily used by the cells of the body. And therefore it's very likely that the individuals in this study were achieving higher or more efficient levels of hydration, okay? So if any of this is confusing, let me be
He clear, I do not believe that we all need to drink deuterium depleted water or that. We all need to
drink.
Electrolyze reduced water
nor do I necessarily believe that we all
need to drink hydrogen-rich water.
However, it's very clear to me, that all these
different forms of water
are better absorbed and therefore lead to better and more, efficient hydration and therefore can reduce inflammation, blood pressure and improve a number of other health metrics.
Because of the elevated pH that all of these different purification, or water, treatment, methods achieve, and that elevated pH again is not changing the pH of the
cells and tissues and organs of your body. You actually don't want that rather
that elevated pH is simply making the water
less acidic than it would be otherwise.
So, the simple takeaway is this, if your tap water contains sufficient
magnesium /, the values that we talked about earlier.
I don't think you need to hydrogen and richer water. I do however,
I suggest that you at least analyze your water or look at some of the professional analysis of water that you can achieve
online and filter out,
disinfectant byproducts, and fluorides, Etc, from that magnesium, or I should say, sufficiently magnesium containing water,
okay. Put simply if your tap water has enough magnesium filter, it, but drink it and I think you're doing just fine. If, however, the levels of magnesium
in your tap water are
not.
Above that value that we talked about earlier in that case, I do think
and I can completely understand why
enriching the amount of hydrogen in that water can make. That water, not only more palatable, right? Give you the Sensation that it softer or smoother or more enjoyable to drink
than more. Acidic water would be.
But also that that water is going to be far, more effective in being absorbed and
hydrating, the cells and tissues of your body, which turns out to be very
Important for an enormous range, perhaps every biological function within your brain and body.
So how can you hydrogen and Rich? Your water. That actually can be done fairly inexpensively. I've been doing that as I mentioned earlier as part of an
experiment in preparation for this episode because it turns out that the water that comes out of my tap has very little magnesium in it and very little calcium as well.
The way to create hydrogen, Rich water. As you can, simply
purchase molecular hydrogen, tablets which in reality
R, just magnesium tablets that dissolve in water and create a free hydrogen. That can interact with the other water.
Molecules, now the chemistry behind it has been
substantiated and I'll provide a link in the show notes. Captions to a paper that gets
into some fairly extensive detail about the way that having an additional hydrogen in your water. Can adjust the flow of electrons and the adjustment of free radicals. But keep in mind, again, this is all through increases in the
pH of your water
and please keep in mind that you can't
If we take any other or any old magnesium tablet, or capsule, and put it into water, the
configuration of the magnesium in these capsules and tablets
is such that, it allows a rapid dissolving of the tablet, and the activation of the free hydrogen, that can interact with the water molecules. Again, they're
only a few scientific studies exploring. The
real biological effects of these activated hydrogen Waters that dissolvable. Tablets are the for less expensive way to go.
Go then purchasing
pre packaged and sealed
hydrogen water. In fact, I don't recommend those Brands because they are
quite expensive and it's not clear how stable the
activated or free hydrogen is in those Waters,
in any case, this is certainly not something that everyone needs to do. I mention it because I have had
a good experience with it myself. I also will mention again that I have no business or affiliation to any of these products, I'll provide a link to a few of them in the show notes.
Options for those of you that want to
experiment and indeed that's why I'm telling you this for those of you that want to experiment with raising the pH of your water
without having to purchase what is ordinarily, quite expensive, higher pH water. You can do this with these dissolvable magnesium
tablets. My experience with them has been quite good. In fact I plan to continue to use them once or twice a day. This is not the sort of thing that you need to do in
all the water that you drink. I want to repeat even if you go down this path and you find that you really like the
Dated hydrogen tablet
approach. It is not the case that you want to put these
in all of your water and you certainly don't want to put them in carbonated waters of any kind, that will lead to a lot of gastric
discomfort. Nor do you want to
put them into hot liquids of any kind. So again this is the sort of thing that you do once or twice maybe three
times a day and you can find out
for yourself and measure subjectively whether or not you like the experience and whether or not you quote unquote, feel better. Now earlier in the episode we were discussing structured water.
Or this fourth phase of water. I know a number of people out there are curious as to whether, or not ingesting structured water is somehow better for us than ingesting non-structured water. All I can say about this, is that it is a
very controversial thing to suggest that
structured water is somehow more biologically, effective, or better for us than on structured water. There are a number of different ways that one can create structured water. They
involve some pretty extensive
And expensive at home systems.
Ranging anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars or more to be quite direct
when one goes into the peer-reviewed scientific literature one
will not find. That is there is
essentially no
real evidence that ingesting structured water leads to any
specific
desired biological outcomes. As I say that, I'm sure there are people out there who have still had
tremendous experiences ingesting
structured water.
They're not, that's two to a placebo effect. Or a, real effect of ingesting structured water isn't
clear. Just to give you a sense of what my stance is on things like
structured water. I think that they
are interesting and intriguing, but as a scientist in the absence of any quality peer review data at present, I can't really suggest that
people go out and start ingesting structured water nor that they adhere to the claims that structured water is going to be really, really good for them. Compared to other forms of water.
That said, I do think that there's an interesting
Sting and open
space for further. Exploration of the biological effects of structured water. Given the fact that structured water does exist, I don't think anyone debates
that and the fact that the
different structures of water in this fourth phase of water as we're calling, it
has been shown to interface with solids and other aspects of liquids and can do. So within organelles of cells,
so different components of cells that control different functions, including
mitochondria, I think there's a potential there
whether or not there's a promise there,
That is another question entirely.
So I don't want to shut the door on structured water. I think this is an open question that I
hope there will be more data to answer those
questions in the not-too-distant future. And meanwhile, if any of you are aware of good, clinical studies, exploring the biological effects
of structured water in either animal models or
humans. Please put those references in the comments on YouTube because
I'm very curious as to how this area of biological effects of structured water is evolving. And
In use to evolve. So today we
discussed water and admittedly we went into a lot of detail about the physics and chemistry
of water in its various forms
and we talked about hydration because I think that's the
main reason why many of you are interested in or concerned about water? We also talked about contaminants and
tap water, which unfortunately do exist and are very prominent in essentially, all regions of the world. So please do get some
information about what's coming out of your TAP
also want to throw in one other piece of information that's really
Critical that I learned about when researching this episode, which is
the quality of water that comes out of your TAP, is not just dictated by the source that it comes from external to your home or apartment. Your pipes are also important and that filter or that little mesh. That sits at the faucet, head is also very important. Most people don't pay attention to that. But turns out that a lot of debris and contaminants can be derived from that little filter that most people just simply
Plea aren't cleaning often enough. So, here, I'm not trying
to tell you that the metal, or the plastic that that filter is made of is a problem more often than not,
contaminants are showing up in water because people aren't cleaning those
filters often enough. And in fact, prior to researching this episode, I didn't ever think to clean that filter. I looked
underneath my faucet and while that filter didn't look, particularly filled with debris, I did find that when I took it off and I looked at the other side, there was quite a lot of debris.
If you are going to consume tap water, you definitely want to consider the source the pipes in your building or compartment. The ones that lead right up to
your glass or jug that you would put that water into. And also, that mesh, that that water passes through as it goes into that glass or
jug. We also talked about how much water to drink. I hope that we finally resolved that question for those of you that have been wondering about that. The Galpin equation is a wonderful approach to how much water to consume during exercise. And by providing these
The formulas of about 8 ounces or 240
ML of water per hour
for the 10 hours from waking until post waking on average. Remember, it's averages. You don't have to consume them
every hour on the hour and no need to be
neurotic. Hopefully, you can achieve
better levels of hydration, which we know can lead to reductions in blood pressure improvements in appetite mood and
focus. And I really think that it's the improvements in cognitive focus and physical ability, both endurance strength.
Other forms of some kind of Readiness in the body Readiness to perform work
in the body, that really are best supported by the hydration literature.
And then, of course, we went through the different forms of water
that you hear about out there and
addressed which ones are going to be beneficial or not. And perhaps more importantly, why any of them would be beneficial thinking about that from the
perspective of
biologists, and the chemistry of water? And I do hope that by
arriving at this point in the episode. Now that you have a much better understanding of the chemistry and physics,
Of water. And the way that water can powerfully impact your biology.
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All about the science, including the chemistry physics
and biology of water and how your body utilizes water. And last, but certainly not
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